


the automatic heart

by randomhorse



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Bisexuality, Coming Out, Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-Season/Series 06, Recovery, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-05
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-12 02:22:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20126413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomhorse/pseuds/randomhorse
Summary: “I don't need you to take pity on me,” Thomas says.“But you needsomething,” Talbot insists.In which happiness for Thomas comes the unlikeliest of ways.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> It's 2019, have a very late Thomas Barrow fix-it (hopefully before the movie fixes it, but after all those years my expectations are pretty low). I'm aware the pairing is a bit of a reach - let's call it "high concept", the "concept" being that Matthew Goode has not played a heterosexual man in his life.
> 
> Disclaimer: Don't drink and drive, kids!
> 
> This work is finished, I'll upload the next chapters in the next couple of days. Rated for upcoming chapters. Enjoy!

_ “Maurice said, 'Now we'll go to Hell.” The machine was powerful, he reckless naturally. It leapt forward into the ferns and the receding dome of the sky. They became a cloud of dust, a stench, and a roar to the world, but the air they breathed was pure, and all the noise they heard was the long drawn cheer of the wind. They cared for no-one, they were outside humanity, and death, had it come, would only have continued their pursuit of a retreating horizon.” _

E.M. Forster: Maurice, 1914

The Talbots return from their honeymoon in Tangier with a blow of air, a mountain of trunks and the dry heat and foreign smells of Africa still folded into their clothes. Little Master George has grown a good three inches and his hair is bleached white, almost silver against his tan skin. The edges of Lady Mary’s neat coiffure are a little frayed and Henry Talbot’s teeth flash brightly as ever with every easy smile. He greets his parents-in-law with sincere warmth and even Mary seems to have left some of her royal stiffness with the Moroccans. 

Thomas watches them slide in and out of his peripheral vision from the corner of the drawing room, staring straight ahead with the silver drinks tray in his gloved hands. Almost three months they have been gone. The woods on the Abbey’s grounds are slowly turning yellow and Thomas has continued serving the family, reduced as it is now to Lord and Lady Grantham, Tom Branson and little Lady Sybil, with Lady Edith occasionally coming down from London to see Miss Marigold. 

Thomas knows the extension of his stay is more of a reprieve than anything else. There has been an effort, certainly, to accommodate him. The Bateses have been friendly, especially Anna, Mr Carson has inquired once or twice, surely on behalf of Lord Grantham, and the others give him a wide berth with a somewhat more amiable air than they used to. He still turns to the vacancies first when he flips through the local paper. Change will come, it always does. It takes the sight of the Talbots in the drawing room for him to realize that he has dreaded their arrival.

After the darkness, there has been calm. First in his room, small and bright as it is, shielding him in an almost disconcerting way from the usual chit-chat of the big house. Then, after the short disruption of the wedding, there was the quietness of the reduced household. And now, with Henry Talbot’s car leaving deep tracks in the gravel on the landing, life has rushed back in and Thomas suddenly feels like he only just woke up. 

“How have you been, Barrow?” Mary inquires when he serves drinks, helping herself to a glass from the tray in his hand.

“Quite well. Thank you, Milady,” Thomas says – a default lie he doesn’t even have to think to fabricate, and it’s only half a lie now anyway. He got rid of the bandages as soon as Dr Clarkson pulled the stitches. The insides of his wrists are still raw and sensitive against his starched cuffs, but everything is better than the worried glances of those who know and the fear of questions from those who don’t. The numbness in his heart has not returned the way it was before, but then he has taken good care to not be idle long enough to let it creep up on him. Deep down he knows keeping busy is not going to keep it away, nor are Baxter’s comforting words or Andy’s clumsy attempts at camaraderie, but if these are the only lines keeping him from drifting he'll be damned not to hold on to them with all the strength he can muster.

“I’m happy to hear it,” Lady Mary says. “Master George was worried you might still be sick when we returned.”

“He needn’t worry,” Thomas replies, “but I appreciate his concern.”

For a moment, Mary looks like she’d like to say something else, but then she just nods curtly, gives him one of her tense smiles paired with a “Very well, Barrow” and turns away to join Talbot and the others.

\---

When change does come, it comes completely and inevitably at the hands of the new Lady Mary Talbot. It takes a few days to transpire in its entirety, but a week after their arrival everybody downstairs knows the Talbots have not returned to stay. They have, the rumour goes, acquired a reasonably sized place just outside of York, allowing for Henry Talbot’s easy transfer up to London and the race tracks of the country and for Lady Mary to keep her position managing the Abbey, if only by proxy.

“Is Master George moving, too?” Daisy asks over dinner preparations.

“I should think so,” Mrs Patmore says. “She is his mother after all. What do you suggest they do? Leave him here with the nannies?”

“I’ll be sad to see them go is all,” Daisy says and proceeds with cutting her vegetables.

“There are quiet times ahead for us,” Mrs Hughes chimes in, passing through the kitchen. “Lady Edith will be taking Miss Marigold up to London eventually, I suppose. We’ll be left with quite the empty house.”

Thomas doesn’t look up from the tray he’s fixing to take upstairs. His hands are steady as always, but it takes effort. His chest feels too tight. For weeks he’s felt like he had an iron belt tied around it, keeping him from breathing easily. He knows what the Talbots’ decision means for him. Even he can see the unnecessary extravagance of employing an underbutler for a four person household.

“Mr Barrow,” Mrs Hughes says and Thomas snaps to attention.

“Yes, Mrs Hughes?”

“After you have brought this upstairs, please look in on Mr Carson. He’d like a word with you.” 

“Very well, Mrs Hughes,” he says, the words raw in his throat. Thomas can feel his face twitch with the effort to retain a neutral expression. There is a story he once heard, back when he was a boy, about a man sitting down at a tyrant's table, with a sword dangling over his head tied to nothing but a string of horse hair. He can almost hear the hair sing quietly under the strain. It is only seconds now until it will snap.

\---

“Mr Barrow,” Mr Carson greets him in his study with the usual full baritone and hint of disapproval.

“You asked to see me, Mr Carson,” Thomas says. When Mr Carson doesn’t ask him to sit down, Thomas assumes his usual formal posture in the center of the room.

“We have to discuss your position,” Mr Carson says. He leans back in his chair and folds his hands over the wine list for the evening resting on his desktop.

“I take it I’m leaving,” Thomas says. He has never been coy with Carson, has always found that offence is the best defence. It feels reckless now even for him, but he can’t stop himself, can’t allow the chance of vulnerability, couldn’t shake the habit if he tried. He forces his mouth to a smile.

“Indeed, Mr Barrow,” Mr Carson says. “It brings me no pleasure to say it, but your days at the Abbey are coming to an end.”

Thomas tries to swallow, his throat is dry like sandpaper. 

“As you may have heard, Lady Mary and Mr Talbot are leaving Downton within the month,” Mr Carson says. “And his Lordship tells me the Abbey won’t be able to sustain you as an underbutler for a household so indefinitely reduced.”

Thomas nods. He has his hands folded behind his back, the fingernails of his left digging into the flesh of his right. “Will that be all, Mr Carson?” he asks.

“Not quite,” Carson says and Thomas braces himself for the humiliation Carson never quite seems to be able to go without. Carson shuffles a few papers around on his table, then he says: “It appears that there is a vacancy for the position of a valet in the Talbot household.”

It takes a few seconds for Thomas to make sense of what Mr Carson is saying, long enough for Carson to resume talking.

“Mr Talbot is looking for an assistant, to be precise, to help with work around the house, the workshop, and the race track,” Mr Carson explains. It’s clear from his tone that in his mind, the job description warrants little more than a stable boy, let alone a trained valet. He’s not wrong.

“I don’t know how to drive,” is all Thomas’ brain stupidly supplies for an answer. 

He is well aware that, if this is indeed an offer, it is being made out of pity, and he is in no position to refuse it. Hell, he is in no position not to be grateful for it. 

“I should add that I am offering this job to you following Lady Mary’s personal request,” Carson says. “She not only recommended you for the position but was adamant about offering the job to you exclusively. Apparently she knows you to be ambitious and resourceful, and don’t we all know that much is true.” Mr Carson’s voice is heavy with spite. “You are to live in the house with them once they’ve moved. Mr Talbot will see to your further instruction.”

So it’s not an offer. It’s an order. Thomas would have expected a wide array of feelings with it, a certain kind of fatalism, even humiliation - not relief, certainly not hope. But it is what he’s feeling now, against his best intentions. Only too far into the silence Thomas realizes that Mr Carson is in fact waiting for his response.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been a valet,” Thomas says. 

“This is hardly the time for illusions of grandeur,” Mr Carson scoffs, Carson, whose fingers rest on a wine list that’s probably more expensive than Thomas’ monthly wages, in the basement of a building so old and heavy with history it’s on the brink of collapse.

“Don’t we all know it,” Thomas says, and offers Mr Carson a cool smile that doesn’t feel like a chore at all.

Mr Carson gives him a sharp look, as if to determine whether the stab at his person was deliberate or not. It's not worth it at this point, Thomas thinks. But to see an old war ship veered off course reeling and creaking by as much as a sly remark is too tempting not to take a chance on it.

“I take it you’re accepting,” Mr Carson says, his mouth tense with disapproval.

All it takes from Thomas is a nod of his head. “Yes, Mr Carson,” he says.

“I will inform Lady Mary of your decision,” Mr Carson says, turning his attention back to the wine list. “That will be all.”

Thomas takes the liberty of staying in his spot just a moment longer, taking in the room, not sad or even wistful, though not exactly happy either. Just growing aware of it for the first time in years, now that it is something he’s leaving behind. The conversations he’s had here come to mind, and how these walls have always felt narrower than they actually were. “Thank you, Mr Carson,” Thomas says.

“Your gratitude is misplaced with me,” Mr Carson says, not looking up at him. 

That much Thomas knows, and he resolves then and there not to forget it. 

\---

Thomas moves out of the Abbey on a clear, crisp morning in November. He leaves behind a narrow bed that has taken his shape, the familiar smell of Mrs Patmore’s cooking and a vague sense of home that comes with routine. He doesn’t leave much else he thinks he might miss. Baxter has promised to write. Andy has, too, and Thomas is looking forward to his lopsided letters. But _ miss _ them? He’s been alone enough to know he has a rootless soul.

The Talbots have not yet arrived when Thomas moves into the room over the barn. It’s bigger than his old chamber in the servants’ quarters of the Abbey, it has its own little oven and familiar sloped, whitened walls. When the wind goes, Thomas can hear the branches of the chestnut tree scrape against the tiles on the roof. The wooden floorboards give way slightly under his feet.

There’s a mangy orange cat that has made its home in the garage and that prowls around his feet when he takes a closer look at the workshop Henry Talbot has built around his cars. There’s space enough in the centre of the room to accommodate his black race car – now missing – next to the convertible already parked in there, and there’s a wide gate, now closed, that suggests this building used to house horses. Talbot has set up shop in one of their boxes, now cleaned from hay and soot. Most of the tools on the counter look only vaguely familiar to Thomas, and with the spare parts he is completely at loss. The tenseness in his gut tightens.

Instead of the gravel driveway leading up to the main entrance of the house, Thomas follows the smaller path winding around the building and leading to the servants’ entrance on the back. Equipped with a set of keys the housekeeper handed him when she welcomed him, Thomas lets himself in. He carefully avoids the housekeeper dressing the beds in the upstairs bedrooms and takes a look at the drawing room first, the dining room, the library, small like a closet compared to the splendorous room in the Abbey. The hall with a wooden staircase winding along the wall, leading to the upstairs quarters, is lined with portraits of unknown faces, still devoid of the Grantham-Crawley memorabilia the new Mrs Talbot will undoubtedly bring to the household. Those at least will remind him of the Abbey.

Downstairs looks like any downstairs he’s known. Cold tiled floors, whitened walls, meagre daylight coming through the small souterrain windows. There's only four sets of bells, one leading to the dining room, one to the drawing room, and two to the main bedroom and the guest quarters. Thomas assumes that apart from the housekeeper and the Lady’s maid and maybe a nanny for Master George there won’t be much need for staff. The sky darkens outside the thick stained glass windows of the kitchen although it’s not even past five, and Thomas hears the wind howling in the chimney. He picks up the freshly pressed paper on the table, in which he will forgo the vacancies for the time being. It’s going to be a quiet life.

“Oh,” Mr Talbot says, entering the kitchen. “You’re already here.” 

Thomas scrambles to attention next to the table, and the paper slides out of his hands to the floor. Thomas hurries to pick it up.

“At ease, soldier,” Talbot says. He pulls his goggles and cap off and flashes Thomas a smile. Talbot's cheeks are patched red, his hair flattened to his skull by his tight leather cap, his driving overall stained black all over.

“Good evening, Sir,” Thomas says, still assuming posture out of habit, his heart suddenly, inconveniently, beating in his throat. “I apologise, I wasn’t expecting your arrival until tomorrow afternoon.” His livery is still stowed in his trunk, up in his new bedroom over the workshop. He feels ill prepared, alone in the kitchen, not dressed for the occasion, with not even a meal to show for his new employer.

“I didn’t mean to intrude, I was just looking for something to eat,” Talbot says. “Truth be told, I’m starving.”

“I’m afraid Mrs Williams is still at work upstairs, fixing the bedrooms,” Thomas supplies. There’s a small pause in which Thomas wonders if he should offer fixing some food himself, even though he wouldn’t know how.

“I’ll just help myself then,” Talbot says without a hint of spite, takes a loaf of bread from the bread tin and some butter and cheese from the fridge. “This will do just fine,” he says. “I’m just glad she’s stocked the pantry already.”

Talbot sits down at the servants’ table and cuts himself slices of cheese and bread. Thomas hasn’t had anything to eat all day safe for the sandwiches Mrs Patmore prepared for the train ride, but that’s hours ago now. Unsure what to do, he just – stays. After a while, Talbot looks up at him.

“You can join me if you like,” he says. “Help yourself, you must’ve had quite the journey.”

Thomas hesitates a moment, observing Talbot who has turned back to his plain bread and cheese. There’s not an insincere streak about him and that in itself is suspicious. With any other man, and especially one that is supposed to be his employer, Thomas would have assumed a trap, some sort of test. But either Talbot is a better actor than anyone Thomas has met, or he is actually genuine. Thomas is not sure which unsettles him more. Hesitantly, he takes a seat next to Talbot, but doesn’t touch the food.

Footsteps on the stairs finally announce the arrival of the housekeeper, carrying a load of sheets from upstairs. When she spots Mr Talbot she sighs heavily and puts the sheets down on the end of the servants’ table.

“Mr Talbot,” she says, “how often have I told you to telephone ahead?”

“It’s good to see you too, Mrs Williams.” Talbot smiles his boyish smile and watches Mrs Williams waddle over to the oven, checking with an expert touch if it’s still warm. 

“Let me rustle something up for you,” she says, and goes on muttering disapproving words under her breath while she stokes the fire.

“I’m sorry,” Mr Talbot says, “it was an impulse decision. I couldn’t be parted from you for one more day.”

“Yes, yes,” Mrs Williams says, cracking eggs into a pan, “next you’ll tell me that black lightning of yours is actually faster than the telephone lines.”

She feigns her crankiness as much as Talbot feigns his sheepishness, and looking back and forth between the two the only genuine feeling Thomas can make out is a familiar fondness. 

“Have you met Mr Barrow yet?” Mr Talbot asks Mrs Williams when she adds bacon to the pan. The smell makes Thomas’ stomach clench with hunger.

“Who do you think let him in here and gave him his keys?” Mrs Williams responds.

“Fair enough,” Talbot says. “Mrs Williams here will see to all your needs,” he tells Thomas as if confiding in him, even though Williams is still very much around to hear, “but don’t hassle her too much or she will put bugs in your stew.”

“Mr Talbot!” Mrs Williams scoffs, setting down not one but two plates of eggs and bacon in front of Mr Talbot and Thomas. “Don’t listen to a word he says,” she tells Thomas. “And eat, for heaven’s sake! How do you plan to get any work done if you don’t eat?” She wipes her hands on her apron before taking it off. “Now if you don’t mind, it’s my turn to retire for the night. I assume the new Lady Talbot did not arrive with you?”, she asks Mr Talbot, looking around as if she expected Lady Mary to pop out of a dark corner.

“Indeed she did not,” Talbot says, “she’s arriving with the afternoon train tomorrow, along with some of her worldly possessions. But since I was going to take the car I figured I’d go ahead and check if the coast is clear.”

“If you need me to prepare anything, Mr Talbot…,” Thomas chimes in on the opportunity to actually do his job instead of just sitting and listening, dumbfounded.

“That won’t be necessary, Barrow,” Talbot says. “You settle in, make yourself at home. Mary and I will have tea in the drawing room later tomorrow afternoon, I suppose, but other than that I don’t think we’ll require much assistance.”

“Very well, Mr Talbot,” he says, scraping together the rest of his bacon and eggs. Talbot hasn’t dropped his smile once but Thomas knows when he’s being put in his place, with kindness or otherwise.

“I could show you around the workshop tomorrow while Lady Mary is still gone,” Talbot suggests. “We could take the car for a spin. If you’re not otherwise occupied, that is.”

The idea makes Thomas' stomach churn. “Yes,” he replies. He’s not quite sure how to sound enthusiastic about the idea, which is clearly what Talbot demands, but judging by Talbot’s reaction he succeeds.

“Wonderful,” Talbot says, and takes Thomas’ empty plate to put it into the sink, while Thomas stands there, hands empty.

\---

While showing Thomas through the barn, Mr Talbot begins to outline the work that needs doing in the workshop. It’s simple tasks, really, not unlike the work Thomas knows from his father’s profession, though the names of the tools and spare parts sound foreign to him. Thomas feels his insides clench with every word he doesn’t understand that Mr Talbot casually drops into his sermon as if it was common knowledge. It’s not his place to ask just yet, he assumes. It’s better to leave Mr Talbot with an at least vaguely favourable first impression.

“Don't worry,” Mr Talbot says, as if picking up on Thomas' thoughts. “You will learn in no time.”

He gives Thomas a scrutinizing look.

“Mary tells me you’re a clocksmith.”

“My father was,” Thomas says. The moment he says it he’s sure it’s the wrong thing - he should have boasted with the hours spent in his father’s shop, the intricacies of a clockwork he knows intimately ---

“That’s good,” Talbot says. “You’re a mechanic already, you just don’t know it yet.” He smiles. “It’s all about the cause and effect, how one part affects another, affects yet_ another _... and what it needs to set it all in motion. You have an understanding of that, don’t you?”

The look Talbot gives him then is too bright to not be suspicious. What did Lady Mary tell Talbot about his role in the Abbey, his role in the war? 

Thomas wonders briefly if Talbot has consulted anyone about his plan – the plan apparently being to uproot Thomas, to take him from the Abbey, to plant him into this strange, new world – to what end, Thomas has no idea. Maybe only to console Lady Mary's conscience with a small, convenient and affordable mercy. It could hardly have been Mary’s plan, with everything she knows about him.

“Show me your hand,” Talbot says.

Obediently, Thomas stretches out his left. The leather of the glove he wears daily has grown softer and thinner with time, almost like second skin.

Talbot takes his hand in his own, spreads Thomas’ fingers apart, and when he finds the hand steady, he nods, satisfied. “That won’t be a problem.”

Thomas nods, and takes his hand back. Resting at his side again it now feels oddly divorced from him, as if Talbot had claimed part of it for himself.

“The trenches, Mary tells me?” Talbot asks.

Thomas nods curtly, but avoids Talbot’s glance. Talbot is man of the world enough to read a conspicuous injury on a man’s weaker hand for what it really is: a mark of cowardice.

The cat jumps on top of the workbench and rubs its head shamelessly against Talbot's torso, leaving red hair all over his waistcoat. Talbot returns the gesture, scratching the cat's chin until it distorts its body in delight. Thomas watches.

“It's almost gone November,” Talbot says, seamlessly turning back to business. “I'll be fixing the cars for winter soon and talk you through the machinery while we're at it. There won't be much driving until spring – so just the usual household chores for you, and plenty of time to familiarise yourself with the equipment.” He nods towards the tools scattered across the workbench and passes Thomas a small, leather-clad book. “Here. This has everything you'll need to know for a start.”

Thomas takes the book from him. It feels heavier than it looks in this hands. “Thank you, Myl--” He stops himself short, self-conscious of the old habit, and corrects himself: “Sir.”

“Talbot to you,” Talbot says.

“Mr Talbot,” Thomas repeats, with a nod, taking the order to heart.

Talbot laughs, and Thomas wonders instantly which part gave him occasion for mockery. But Talbot stifles his laugh quickly, and puts his hand on Thomas' shoulder with a good-natured smile. “Just Talbot will do, Barrow. I don't appreciate a hierarchy in my workshop.”

Thomas looks at him, and his face must betray a certain amount of astonishment, because Talbot takes his hand away and seems to check himself for a moment. He clears his throat.

“Of course, you may still maintain the proper hierarchy around the house and with Mary – Lady Mary, that is. If you are more comfortable with that.”

“Thank you, Mr--” Again, Thomas stops himself short. “I mean just -- Talbot.”

“Exactly,” Talbot says, and smiles with a flash of bright teeth, seemingly content.

“You will get used to it,” he says, and from his mouth it sounds almost like a delicious secret he is confiding to Thomas. “And come spring, you will accompany me to the races.”


	2. Two

If anything, Lady Mary's arrival only serves to highlight how different life in the Talbot household is compared to the luxurious life in the Abbey. In the fifteen years Thomas has worked there, the Abbey has resembled a well-maintained steamship, manned by a crew standing to attention with what amounted to military discipline. Thomas has seen the army, and has come to the fair assessment that Mrs Hughes is in no way inferior to your average group captain. 

The Talbot household – or the Small House, as the Abbey staff refers to it, which Thomas learns from Baxter's letters – is more of a sailing boat in comparison, fast and nimble. Arrangements change by the day, and sometimes by the hour. A routine is hard to come by. The Talbots don't follow the strict schedule of etiquette the Granthams used to observe. They walk when they feel like it and they eat when they're hungry, they go to London for business or for fun, sometimes spontaneously, and guests are always welcome to stay in the guest rooms – and they keep coming, providing the new Mrs Henry Talbot with plenty of opportunity to show off her married bliss. It keeps Thomas on his toes all through December, and when Christmas and New Years give way to the long, wet stretch of January, he forgets to miss the Abbey's comfortable, slow rhythms. 

The difference is not in the work itself, but in the details. The tones of voices that come muffled through the old oak doors when he waits on them, the small gestures. Talbot's hand candidly on Lady Mary's thigh and hers on his neck, little Master George turning the corridors into his very own race courts, train tracks, foreign jungles, and noisily so – it makes a profound difference, Thomas learns that winter, to serve in a house whose occupants are  _ happy _ . 

The Abbey, that looming, imperial tombstone, had had an appetite for sadness, he understands now. Whatever sorrows its occupants brought to it, the Abbey had swallowed them whole – not to digest but to store in its walls. Sometimes at night the old house had had a spooky quality about itself, as if the wailing of centuries was still caught in the corridors. Thomas, not being superstitious himself, had never ascribed it to ghosts, as some of the maids – and on occasion even Mrs Patmore – did. He had lived in the Abbey long enough to know that it did not need ghosts to haunt it. The living and their memories did a fine job of that all by themselves.

For some time Thomas had suspected Lady Mary to be one of those flesh-ghosts, not more than a shell of a human being, a gesture, a status, a figure to hang a pretty dress on, with thorns beneath to keep you from snatching it off her. But in this house, the Small House, Lady Mary  _ lives _ . It is here that Thomas hears her laugh for the first time – not the sneer she used to have for her sister, or the high, beckoning call for her suitors, but a full laugh, bright and sharp. It's so foreign to him that he wonders for a brief second if the Talbots have visitors in their drawing room that night, but the guest room is unoccupied, and there are only Henry Talbot and his happy, happy wife behind the ajar doors. 

When by February the cold finally comes, and the windows freeze shut with the icy wind, and Thomas spends his days doing rounds keeping the furnaces alight, and his nights under several blankets, because the small oven in his barn quarters is far from sufficient – he still finds a warmth within himself he would never have suspected there. He sleeps deep and dreamlessly in his barn shelter, despite the cold and the howling of the wind against the tiles, and when he wakes, he finds the orange cat curled up on his feet.

\---

“Right,” Talbot says, pulling the tarp off his black race car. Dust dances in the air, sharpening the rays of sunshine falling through the high windows of the barn. “Let's see what you remember.”

Talbot opens the barn doors wide, and together they push the heavy vehicle out into the yard, gravel slipping beneath their feet. The frost has thawed for the last time this year, and there is a timid warmth about the early April sun. Talbot breathes deeply and turns his face towards the sun for an instant, soaking it up. His eyes closed and his face smooth, there is something of the flower about him, the earliest blossom of spring.

Thomas stands back from the automobile, his hands folded behind his back.

Talbot tears himself away from the feeble light and shakes his head as if shaking off an errand thought. “Alright,” he says. “All yours.” He makes an inviting gesture towards the car.

Thomas looks at him, puzzled.

“You had time to study the book I gave you, haven't you?” Talbot asks.

“Yes,” Thomas says. The little leather-bound volume, complete with illustrations, lies on his night stand up in the attic, the edges of its pages softened by Thomas leafing through it at night, trying to commit the words and shapes to memory. Sometimes, late at night, he would lit his gas lamp and take it downstairs into the freezing barn, sorting through the tools on the workbench, one hand holding his duvet around his shoulders, one holding the book, to make it all seem a little more real. This, however – this is far from what he studied for.

“Show me,” Talbot says. “I know you learned it all.”

“Yes,” Thomas repeats, and steps up to the car. His fingers leave bright spots on the dusty black hood of it.

“I'd give it a good dusting,” Thomas says, and Talbot laughs.

“You will, later. For now, let's concentrate on the engine.”

Thomas opens the hood the way he read how. His fingers are oily and black as soon as he touches the engine, and he is grateful for the overall Talbot has provided for the occasion to save Thomas' livery from staining. He takes a deep breath and puts his winter's studies into action.

“The oil will need changing after this period of rest,” Thomas assesses.

Talbot nods. “Very good. And how do we go about that?”

Thomas feels himself momentarily transported back into his father's workshop, decades back. No more than six or seven years old, he'd spend hours peering over his father's shoulder. The fragility of the work his father did with his big workman's hands, the smell of his pipe and the metallic tang of dust on the back of his tongue – none of that applies to this April day in the English countryside outside York, but the feeling is the same. He's being tested, but not in a malicious way. Thomas doesn't remember the last time he was given an opportunity to learn out of kindness. Life has made a habit out of teaching him with sticks and stones.

Calmly, slowly, Thomas conducts the oil change the way it was described in Talbot's manual. Talbot only steps in where his machine differs from the one in the book, and explains the differences to Thomas in the process. Some of the alterations he made himself, and Thomas spots something akin to a father's pride in his voice when he talks about it.

Finally, when both their hands and thighs are stained black from the work, the engine sputters and jumps alive. Talbot, in the driver's seat, grins at Thomas, his eyes bright.

“Music to the ears, is it not,” he shouts over the roar of the engine. Talbot leans across the passenger's seat and opens the door on the passenger's side. “Are you coming?”

“Sir?”

Talbot regards his slip with a raised eyebrow, and gestures him to get into the car.

“Come on, you've earned it.”

Again, Thomas feels tested, only this time he is not sure it's with kindness. But Talbot looks at him with expectant eyes and the engine is stuttering, so Thomas takes the leap and slips his stained, dirty overalls on Talbot's fine leather seats. The engine vibrates all around him, he can feel the power of it in his thighs, like an unbridled horse. 

Talbot reaches between Thomas' knees and opens the glove compartment. His hand bumps against Thomas' when he offers Thomas a pair of goggles. Thomas grabs for them, maybe a touch to petulant, but Talbot doesn't notice – he has turned his attention to adjusting the mirrors.

“Ready?” Talbot asks. And before Thomas can responds, Talbot lets the engine roar, reaches over the car's right side for the parking brake, and with a routine grip the car lunges forward. Thomas' heart jumps to his throat, he feels himself being pressed back into the seat by the sheer force of velocity. When he turns his head, they are already an inconceivable distance from the house, that shrinks further away where the rows of trees meet.

“Feels good, doesn't it?” Talbot asks, when Thomas turns his head back towards the road before them. It rushes away under them faster than Thomas can understand, he feels like they are moving faster than time itself. He tries to take a deep gulp of air that the speed immediately snatches from his mouth. 

Talbot next to him laughs, exhilarated. “Relax!”

Thomas is aware that his knuckles on his knees are white, and his whole body is rigid, pressed back into the soft, fragrant leather. Talbot slows down marginally to take the corner from the alley onto the open road, and Thomas yaps for a breath when he has the chance, and then Talbot accelerates again. But this time, with nothing but the open fields around them, and no trees rushing past, Thomas finds the tenseness of his body dissolve. Suddenly, he feels like he is one with the engine around him, his racing heart just another part of the machinery, and he melts into the leather seat, allows the velocity to take him, opens his burning eyes wide against the wind, and feels --- 

“That's it,” Talbot says, one hand on the steering wheel, looking over to Thomas. The tendons on his arm are taunt, but his smile is wide, elated. It mirrors exactly what Thomas feels, although there is no word for it. “There's nothing bloody like it.”

When they return to the yard, the chestnut tree is already licking long shadows across the gravel. Talbot stops the car in the centre of the yard and extinguishes the engine. The sudden silence rings loud in Thomas' ears, and he feels his whole body tingle with the echo of vibration. His cheeks feel beaten numb by the wind, but the smile is still etched onto them. When Thomas gets out of the car and attempts to smooth his face back into the appearance of stoic servility, he finds it impossible.

“You'll see to that polish tomorrow, won't you, Barrow?” Talbot says, getting out of the driver's seat. Somehow, Talbot seamlessly slips back into his role with his feet on steady ground – but then Thomas suspects that for him the two are not that different. 

“Yes,” Thomas says. He adds  _ Sir  _ in his mind, but doesn't speak it. He cannot bring himself to call Talbot just  _ Talbot _ – they are not racing buddies after all, no matter the appearance of equality Talbot is after. There is something Talbot gets out of making this difficult for him, Thomas thinks, a kick maybe. It could be none more apparent now, with both of them back in the yard, feet on steady ground, and with Talbot bright and elated, and Thomas back at the receiving end of orders, as he has been all his life.

In the morning, Thomas has to force himself to attend to breakfast for the family before he returns to the barn, changes into his overalls and gives all his attention to the waiting automobile. The car's elegant, concave surfaces are waiting for his touch, and Thomas pretends he can still feel warmth under them, like in a living thing. 

He has heard men speak of their machines as if they were their wives, and even though he then pretended to not understand the first thing about it, Thomas knows what they mean now. Only the car doesn't turn into a soft, pliable lady under his polishing rag. It reminds him of the small, marble Adonis in Lord Grantham's study, the one that gave him ideas when he was first sent to dust it off, back when he was a footman.

As Thomas spit-shines the car's surface, he wonders when he ended up so twisted, longing for immobile objects rather than people. It was Jimmy who wrestled the promise from him in the end, the promise he should've made after Edward Courtenay's death – to not ever harm a living, breathing thing again with his soiled, pungent touch. 

He rubs every spot from the immaculate metal, until he can see his face in it, distorted like on a freshly polished spoon, until his fingers and back ache with the effort. In the end, the sunlight catches in it and reflects back onto Thomas' face. It is true, he is rotten, but how he longs in that moment to touch a living soul again. No matter how much he shines it, the metal remains cold underneath his touch.

\--- 

There is a tangible change of energy in Talbot as soon as they arrive at the race court, a sort of manic vibration that reminds Thomas of an idling engine. It needs nothing but a kick to send him spinning, racing off. 

As Lord Grantham's underbutler, Thomas had spent a fair amount of time at the races – the horse races that is, where the rich mingled with the richer, and the main objective had always seemed to Thomas to show off new articles of clothing and substantial sums for betting. None of that has prepared him for what he finds at Talbot's races. 

The smell is the first thing that is distinctly different. Instead of the earthy odour of horses, the air is hot and ripe with oil, burning rubber and gasoline. The smell sickens Thomas the first breath he takes, but then it comes to him like smoking: the fumes make him a little light in the head, but not in an unpleasant way.

“Here,” Talbot says, and shows him to their assigned area in the long stretch of the race court building. Each of the cells lead out directly onto the tarmac, towards the starting line. In the boxes surrounding theirs, other drivers are already bustling around their automobiles. Apart from a long, empty workbench and a couple of car jacks, there's not a lot in theirs to make it look like a workshop yet.

“Let's set up,” Talbot says.

Thomas nods. 

While they spend the better part of an hour carrying equipment back and forth between the transporter Talbot hired and their stall, Thomas watches the people around. There are no valets to be seen, only men – and the occasional lady – in rolled up sleeves and workman's clothes. Late April has given them a first summer's day, and the air is humid with it already. The skin on Thomas' neck burns bright crimson in the course of the afternoon. 

He understands better now what Talbot meant when he said he didn't appreciate a hierarchy in his workshop. There is little of that to be felt around here. Everybody gets their hands dirty.

“Don't take that,” Talbot had said, with his usual unsettling smiling abrasiveness, when he had spotted Thomas' livery on top of his packed bags in the garage.

“Or take it,” he had added, “but don't assume there will be a chance for you to wear it.”

Sheepishly, Thomas had stowed the pressed and starched livery back inside his closet. Now, he is silently grateful. What an odd figure he would make, a penguin amongst ducklings, he thinks, and pushes his cap back to wipe his sweaty forehead.

Thomas watches Talbot's first race of the season from their box, his feet on the vibrating tarmac, and the heat and velocity of it drives him mad, or maybe that's just the fumes from the engine exhausts. In the brief intermission between laps, he jumps forward to test the pressure on Talbot's tyres, Talbot's eyes on him, bright and electric, and when he touches the hood of the car before he sends it off again, it is searing.

Talbot comes in third, which is not bad, although not good either, and he spends the remainder of the day in an irritable mood, just barely concealed by his usual joviality. 

“Let's head to the hotel,” Talbot says, when the sun is barely beginning to set. For the rest of the racers the party seems to be only beginning, engine exhausts mixing with fumes of gin and cooking meat over the racetrack. But Talbot looks tired underneath his manic energy, and Thomas collects their things and allows Talbot to drive them back to their accommodation in the next village over.

It's when Talbot gets out of the car on the dark, quiet village road, that Thomas notices something is wrong. A sigh escapes Talbot when he stretches his body, and he doesn't stretch it fully, either, but keeps his right shoulder rolled in, as if it pained him to stand upright.

“Talbot,” Thomas says, the singular name still foreign on his tongue, when Talbot reaches to grab his own luggage. “Here, let me carry that.”

“Nonsense, Barrow,” Talbot says, and takes the case from Thomas' hand.

“You're injured,” Thomas says, and when Talbot's gaze meets his, he looks caught, like a child with its hand in the candy jar. This is something Thomas has learned in the trenches: it doesn't do to wait for someone to admit their injuries, not if they were stubborn enough to conceal them in the first place.

“Fair,” Talbot says, disgruntled, and with a resigned drop of his shoulders. “Come in briefly when you're finished with that, will you? I'll be upstairs.”

“Very well,” Thomas says, with a nod. 

It takes him only two runs to carry their combined luggage to the upper floor of the inn. Talbot told him he travelled light, but Talbot's light is worlds from Lord Grantham's light, that almost always required a second footman to carry a trunk upstairs. Talbot is content with a light travel case, and Thomas' worldly belongings don't need more than a valise.

Talbot has booked them adjoined rooms on the upper floor, Thomas' smaller and facing out to the street. He only takes a minute to wash his hands, before he knocks on the connecting door and steps through to Talbot's bedroom.

“Ah,” Talbot says when he enters, and Thomas stops short at the door, because Talbot is undressed in front of his washing table, his chest bared, wearing only his cotton underpants. When dressing Talbot for the evening, Thomas has never been asked to do more than help with a dinner jacket, two brush strokes across each shoulder, and a hand with the tie.

“I might need a spot of --- assistance --” Talbot says, and when he shifts his body around in the low light of the gas lamps, Thomas can see Talbot's entire right side is bruised, starting at the ribcage and down, disappearing under Talbot's underpants.

“I'm sorry to be imposing on you. If there was any way I could administer this myself --” Talbot points towards a jar lying on the bed across from him.

“It's no trouble,” Thomas replies, his mouth dry.  _ He doesn't know _ , he thinks.  _ He doesn't know, or he wouldn't ask. _

With a wince, Talbot lowers himself onto the bed and pulls his feet under, his torso propped up with his left, his right arm lifted to bare his side. It recalls the pose of a certain marble Adonis --- 

“If you would be so kind?” Talbot says.

“Yes, of course,” Thomas supplies, jumping back into his role. He may be dressed in civilian clothes, but this is not the race track or the workshop, and here he is a valet, nothing more, nothing less. 

He steps around the bed and sits down on the edge of it behind Talbot. Out of Talbot’s line of sight, he undos the fastening of his glove and slips it off, sets it aside on the made linen of the bed where it lays like a snake’s shed skin.

“How did that happen?” Thomas asks, opening the jar – as much to keep his own mind of the task at hand as to make it less taxing for his employer. 

“Bloody Andrew Jennings outbraked me on a turn. Threw me into the door. First race of the summer, I'll be buggered if this puts me out for the season.”

“Nonsense,” Thomas finds himself saying, although he knows nothing about the races, and too little about Talbot's injury.

Talbot seems to think the same thing, because he chuckles. “That's a kind assessment, doctor,” he says, in that mocking tone of his, and Thomas wishes he hadn't said anything.

He spreads some of the balm on his hands – it has an intense and immediate cooling effect – and scoots a little closer to Talbot on the sagging mattress.

“Here goes,” he warns softly, before he puts his hand on Talbot's injured side. 

Talbot shudders briefly under his touch, and then steadies himself against it. Thomas tries to work quick but carefully, professionally.  _ Do not linger, do not ---  _ Talbot's side and back are taunt under his hands, and warm, and Thomas concentrates on the cooling effect the balm has on his palms, and not on how Talbot's skin turns soft and hot under his touch, or on the knot manifesting in his stomach.

When Thomas has spread a good amount of balm on the exposed parts of Talbot's injury, he stops. He knows the bruises are spreading further underneath Talbot's waistband, down his hip and his thigh, probably. But how could he ask? He takes his hands away from Talbot's skin, and sits upright on the mattress, his hands in his lap. Talbot looks over to him, maybe a split second too long, and nods.

“Thank you, Barrow,” Talbot says. He scoots to the edge of the bed and gets up, and Thomas thinks he can spot the effort with which Talbot keeps himself from wincing again. He steps over to the stool by the window and pulls a shirt over his head. “Thank you, that has made a world of difference.”

Thomas stands up, too, facing his employer. His hands hang at his sides, still slick and cool with the balm they administered. “Will that be all, Mr Talbot?” Thomas asks.

“I wish you'd drop the  _ Mister _ ,” Talbot says, with a sigh.

“We're not in the workshop,” Thomas says, by means of an excuse.

“Why is it so important to you to subordinate yourself to another man?” Talbot asks, suddenly sharp. Thomas can tell he is tired, wired, in pain, and the balm might also be taking effect, numbing more than just his skin.

“It's the job,” Thomas offers, simply. It's an easy answer, although he's not sure it's a true one.

Talbot nods, tired, and wipes his hand over his face.

“I apologize, Barrow,” he says. “I don't mean to push.”

Thomas reflexively shakes his head. “You are within your rights.”

“Exactly,” Talbot says, as if Thomas had just proved his point. 

“Will that be all – Talbot,” Thomas says, putting emphasis on the break where he has omitted the  _ Mister _ , and to his surprise he catches Talbot smile. 

“Right you are, Barrow,” Talbot says. “You should get some sleep.”

“Very well,” Thomas says, falling back on his heels. He collects the jar of balm from the bed and puts it safely on Talbot's night-stand. “I'll be right next door if you need anything.”

Talbot nods. “Thank you, Thomas.”

Thomas nods curtly, and leaves the room. It's only when the door closes between them that his hands start to tremble, still cool with the balm but hot underneath, and he allows himself to feel his heart beat in his throat, like it did when Talbot first put him into his fast car.

_ Thomas _ , Talbot called him. It shouldn't touch Thomas so, but it does, it sparks something alive inside of him, something he would rather know dead.


	3. Three

Lady Mary hates Talbot's bruises, which Thomas does not quite understand, because he is sure she gets to spread balm all over Talbot's body at night because of them. But he overhears them rowing in the drawing room when they return to the Small House.

“You have me worried out of my bloody  _ mind _ , Henry,” Lady Mary shrieks, high-pitched, not hysteric but furious. 

“Mary, it's perfectly safe,” Talbot's voice comes softer.

“Is it? Is that why you haven't been sitting down properly for a week?”

“Mary ---”

“I am not having this discussion, Henry. I won't lose another husband, and I won't have George lose another father.”

Thomas hears her storm off, and retreats from the door fast enough to let her pass without being noticed. It hardly qualifies as eavesdropping, with how voices travel from wall to wall in this small house. It's nothing like Downton in that respect. But, like in the Abbey, the paramount skill of a servant is that of maintaining the illusion of privacy, whether you are in the room or not. 

Moments later Talbot hurries out of the room and up the stairs, after her. Thomas is sure that, if he wanted to, he could hear them reconcile in the master bedroom. Strangely enough, their fighting only intensifies Thomas' impression of their happiness. They are not like the few couples he has gotten to know, who bicker and find faults with each other, and accumulate animosities while keeping quiet about it. They fight as passionately as they do anything else, both stubborn to the bone, and they make up again, always.

This time, they seem to have agreed on Talbot to stop racing for a couple of weeks, at least until his bruises have healed. Talbot accepts the embargo on terms Thomas doesn't know – but it has to be good terms, because it seems to come at the expense of Talbot's sanity. When he idles into the barn on his afternoons off, watching Thomas tend to the engines, he has a nervous, wired energy about him. It reminds Thomas of the men forced to give up cigarettes after surviving mustard gas, jittery and irritable. And Talbot is _ always  _ there. Thomas almost wishes Talbot would break Lady Mary's embargo, if only to be granted a half-day alone.

“I have a race set for early June,” Talbot finally confides in Thomas on one of those tense afternoons. “I haven't told Mary yet, but I  _ am _ attending,” he adds, putting emphasis on it, even though Thomas hasn't opened his mouth to contradict him.

“So I have a favour to ask of you, Barrow,” Talbot continues.

“Anything,” Thomas replies, although, as much as he welcomes the development, he already dreads the demand. Surely he'll have to make excuses – urgent business in London with the chaps, a hunting party that inexplicably invited only the husband, not the wife and son – and he knows from experience how these things get ugly quickly, and lies get caught out. 

“You don't have to,” Talbot says. “This is the workshop, I am asking you as a friend.”

The workshop, Talbot's sanctuary. Thomas has made strides figuring the man out, spending so much time in his company while the weather begged for a spin in the car. Talbot despises being served. It's not that he won't take advantage of it to a degree – he is still at heart an upstairs man – but he'd much rather ask a favour than make an order. Not that it makes a difference to Thomas, apart from the name they are putting to it. Talbot pays his wages and gives him food and shelter. Thomas would no more be in a position to refuse a favour than to refuse an order.

“Ask,” Thomas says.

“You know Mary is scared of me driving,” Talbot says, and Thomas takes care to school his expression into one that shows an appropriate amount of surprise. “This is not news to you,” Talbot adds, with a half-smile, and Thomas drops the act. “It makes her anxious, it always has, and I understand, but I can't bloody well  _ stop _ , can I?”

Here it comes, thinks Thomas. The bloody dagger.

“If you could – keep her company, while I race,” Talbot continues, in a much different direction than Thomas anticipated. “I'll take George and her along, of course, I can't have you stay here, I need you around the track ---”

Thomas feels a sudden bout of pride with that,

“--- but if you could just keep an eye on her while I'm on the course. That would mean the world to me. Explain things to her. Keep her mind off the danger of it. I can't do both, and she gets in a bad way when she's not with me.”

For a moment, Thomas is dumbfounded. He cannot quite believe Talbot is not asking him to lie.

“I could try,” Thomas says, and Talbot's face lights up.

“Thank you, Barrow,” Talbot says, and Thomas knows he means it, because for the first time in weeks the tenseness seems to dissipate from Talbot's shoulders, and instead of the mock half-smile he offers Thomas a real one.

\---

“It's a ghastly way to spend one's time,” Lady Mary says. Thomas has taken George and her down to the boxes, where the asphalt vibrates under the idling engines. He has done final checks on Talbot's black lightning in the morning, but Lady Mary's anxious energy is infectious. Her elegant, fashionable figure looks lost between the rough, dirty overalls accumulating at the start. The air is thick with fumes already, and sweltering hot.

“If you'd prefer the stand ---” Thomas offers, but Lady Mary shuts him up with a wave of her hand. 

“Nonsense, Barrow,” she says. “I signed up for this when I married him, didn't I?”

Thomas hides a smile.  _ She loves Talbot _ , he thinks. She wouldn't be here if she didn't. 

The crowd thickens, and little George at her side is crammed into her skirts.

“I can't see!” he complains.

Thomas bows down and picks him up, lifts the boy over his head until he straddles Thomas' neck and sits on his shoulders. 

“Better, Master George?” Thomas asks.

“Thank you, Barrow,” George says.

“Yes, thank you,” Lady Mary says, with an uncharacteristic softness about her, that might just be due to the shallow, nervous breathing she is trying to hide. “Aren't they starting already?”

Thomas cranes his head over the crowd as best as he can with George on his shoulder. “Any minute now, Milady,” he says. “George, do you see a flag? Black and white and chequered, like a chess board?”

“Yes!” George exclaims.

“Now, then,” Thomas informs Lady Mary. She has her hands clasped together in front of her torso, her back rim-rod straight, the elegant pose they beat into her from early childhood, Thomas knows, that works wonders disguising any sort of emotion, good or bad. 

And then the shot rings out over the crowd, the drivers start running towards their vehicles, and within seconds everything drowns out in noise – the crowd cheering, the engines howling and racing away. The crowd gets tenser with every lap that passes, everybody pressing forward towards the barrier separating the boxes from the tarmac. 

Then comes the pit stop. Thomas sprints forward when the cars stop, leaving little George with Lady Mary in the crowd. He feels an unexpected pang of guilt leaving her behind between the rough, shoving shoulders of the onlookers, but Talbot's tires and engine cannot wait.

Thomas checks them routinely.

“Is she alright?” Talbot asks from inside the car. His knuckles are white on the steering wheel, and Thomas knows he is vibrating with adrenaline, the urge to kick the pedal down and race again. 

“Yes,” Thomas says – he is not quite sure if Talbot is referring to the machine or to Lady Mary, but either way his response is honest.

“Good,” Talbot says. “Stand back.”

And Talbot races off in a gust of fumes and burning rubber, and all Thomas can do is fight his way back into the watching, cheering crowd.

“Is he alright?” Lady Mary asks, her eyes wide and anxious.

“Yes, Milady,” Thomas says, smiling at their symmetry. 

“I want to see again,” George demands at his feet, and Thomas lifts him back up on his shoulders. Next to him, he feels some of Lady Mary's tenseness dissipate, and when the first cars come howling over the finish line, Talbot's black lightning among them, he thinks he can spot a smile on her face.

“Ghastly,” she says, when Talbot finally walks towards them in his soiled, sweaty overalls, his face oily but alight with the thrill of the race, but by now Thomas is sure she is teasing. She kisses Talbot on the mouth, and he pulls her towards himself as if they weren't in public, as if there weren't people watching and she wasn't a high-born lady.

“I'll be a minute on the track,” he says, when he lets her go. “Will you be alright?”

She nods, her eyes still fixed on his electric face.

“Get Georgie a lemonade, I'll be with you before you know it,” Talbot says. Before he turns around he briefly locks eyes with Thomas. It's just the hint of a nod and a smile, but it shows enough gratitude for Thomas to understand. He has passed a test.

\---

They drop off Lady Mary and George at the inn for the night, and get back into Talbot's car.

“Your first night at the races, Barrow,” Talbot declares ceremonially.

“Do the cars need attending?” Thomas asks. 

“No,” Talbot responds, chuckling. He reaches down between Thomas' knees again, to the glove compartment, and takes a flask from it. “But this does.”

The night is humid when they arrive back at the race court, the air humming with voices and music. Talbot hasn't lost any of his vibrant energy after the race, on the contrary: he seems to be spilling over with it.

“What do you need me for?” asks Thomas, when they get out of the car.

“Will you relax for one bloody second?” Talbot asks, and Thomas wonders if he is drunk already, just from the few swings from the flask. Or maybe he's been drunk all day, drunk on the rush of it. “You're here as my partner, understand? No valeting tonight.”

They walk towards the lit tents, groups of men scattered between them, all of them racers, Thomas assumes, or their partners. He wonders how many of them, like him, are valets in disguise. Talbot is greeted by a cheer, and soon Thomas finds himself with a glass in his hands, and jovial hands on his shoulder.

While Talbot mingles with his own kind, Thomas finds himself an onlooker from within the crowd. It's not a foreign position – he has been an onlooker on other peoples' lives for most of his own – but it's less comfortable now than he has known it before. He feels like he's wearing someone else's clothes, like he's taking the place of someone who should be here instead. Lady Mary, possibly. His place is not in the middle of the crowd, but at the edge of it, watching, attending, invisible. But Talbot doesn't allow him to slip into the margins, where it is quieter and darker. He keeps a possessive hand somewhere about Thomas for most of the night, sometimes his shoulder, sometimes his back or his elbow.

Thomas feels handled, and, in brighter moments, shown off, and when Talbot goes out of his way to praise him, it feels false and warm at the same time, and Thomas has the instinctive urge to shrink out of the spotlight, until Talbot puts his warm hand on his shoulder again, and shoves another drink in his hand.

“Allow it,” he says, quietly, to Thomas only. “You've earned it.”

“I'd rather not ---” Thomas says, and finds his tongue already heavy with the few drinks he's had.

“Give yourself this one night, Barrow,” Talbot says. “There's no harm in it.”

_ Isn't there? _ Thomas thinks, and takes a swing of his drink. He's proper buzzed already, sweating more than what he can blame the heat for. It's warm in the centre of the crowd, and the temptation to let go is enormous, but so are the consequences, he knows. Levity of this sort always, always comes at a price. Talbot will sleep off his hangover and get up unchanged, but for Thomas the night will linger, and the recalled sensation of it, the taste of freedom, will make his life seem all the duller, all the sadder for it. He's tasted it before, and it has taken him years to recover, and worse: it has made him light-headed and reckless, chasing that elusive patch of light. He is not going to try it again, not on the chance it might come back to haunt him.

“Let's get the car,” Talbot orders him well past midnight, and well past drunk. His shoulder bobs into Thomas' as they walk, Talbot catching his step in uneven patches of grass.

When they arrive at the black lightning, Talbot hands Thomas the key. “You drive.”

Thomas looks at Talbot. “I can't drive.”

“You'll learn, then,” Talbot says, and shoves Thomas towards the driver's door of the car. 

A dozen scenarios unfurl in Thomas' head, the various ways they could crash and kill themselves, Lady Mary widowed once again, little George not orphaned once, but twice, the ways he could damage the car and with it Talbot's chances on the second day of races ---

“Don't bloody think, Barrow, just drive!” Talbot says, and takes his seat on the passenger's side.

Slowly and clumsily, and much drunker than he would like, Thomas lowers himself on the driver's seat. He puts the key into the ignition and turns it, and the engine stutters alive, idling. This much he knows from testing the engines in the barn. The rest is purely theory.

“Hands on the steering wheel,” Talbot says from the passenger's seat. The front of the car is so narrow their knees bump into each other were the seats meet. “Come on, Barrow. You've seen me do this a hundred times.”

Thomas doesn't have the words or the breath to describe how this is different, worlds away from watching Talbot's routine motions.

“Parking brake,” Talbot says, and Thomas unfastens the lever over the right front wheel.

“Alright. Left foot down,” Talbot says. “That's the clutch.”

Thomas does as he's told.

“Now,” Talbot says. “Put your right foot down, easy --- easy does it!” The motor howls, drowning out the distant sound of partying.

“And take your left off the clutch at the same time. Be slow about it. You'll feel it.”

Thomas can hardly feel his feet. He holds the steering wheel so tight he's afraid he'll tear it off. But after he has stalled the motor twice with a sound that makes the hair on the back of his hands stand on edge, he finally feels it, the sweet spot where the car's power transfers to his foot, and suddenly the machine becomes an extension of his body.

“That's it,” Talbot says quietly. “Put your right foot down just slightly --”

And suddenly the car jolts forward, jerking across the unsteady ground. It's all Thomas can do to not laugh out loud.

“Very good, Barrow!” Talbot yells. “Now. Road.”

Somehow Thomas manages to steer the car from its spot on the meadow back onto the paved road without stalling it once.

“Bravo,” Talbot says, when they've finally got asphalt under their wheels. “Now,” he continues. “Gears. Come on.”

The second Thomas takes his hand off the steering wheel to grab the gear stick, he stalls the engine again.

“Not a problem, just start her up again.”

With a motion that has already begun to feel familiar, Thomas turns the key again and sets the car in motion.

“Clutch. Now put your hand on the gearstick,” Talbot says. “Come on, it's easy.”

Thomas feels oddly divorced from his own body, like he doesn't live in it any more at all, thinking about his feet on the pedals, right hand on the wheel, the open road ahead of him and his left on the gearstick all at the same time. They are rolling, slowly, while Thomas jerks the gear stick back, trying to find second gear.

“There,” Talbot says, and puts his hand on top of Thomas'. The engine stutters, but keeps running. “There,” Talbot says again, guiding Thomas' hand on the gearstick, allowing it to latch into the correct position.

“Now let go of the clutch and accelerate.”

Thomas does as he's told and the road picks up speed under them, along with the trees lining the alley. Talbot's hand is still on Thomas' on the gearstick, nothing but the thin, worn leather of the glove between them.

“One more,” Talbot says. “Clutch.” Thomas does as he's told, Talbot guides the gear stick into the correct position, and the car speeds up. “See?” Talbot says. “It's like riding a bicycle.”

Thomas can't help but laugh at that, exhilarated. They are still nowhere near Talbot's speed, but to Thomas, they are racing. The moon is out over the Yorkshire fields that night, fat and yellow, and the road ahead is almost bright like day. Talbot settles back in his seat, and Thomas does the dance of clutch – gear – acceleration again by himself, shifting into fourth.

“Just so,” Talbot says, and Thomas smiles, pride welling up in his chest.

“Drive us home?” Talbot asks, and when Thomas briefly takes his eyes off the road, he sees Talbot looking at him, his eyes dark.

“Yes,” Thomas says.


	4. Four

They pay the price for their late-night escapade in the morning, with the temperatures even higher than the day before, and the black lightning with an odd stutter in its engine that, Thomas suspects, might be the result of stalling it once too often on their long journey back to the inn. 

“I can't find the bloody fault,” Talbot says, hunched over the engine in their box. He rolls back onto his heels with an exasperated sigh and stretches, his oily hands almost grazing the low ceiling. There are dark patches on his back and under his arms where he has sweat through his overall, and even though the sun is still low, the temperature on the tarmac is well beyond boiling.

“Will you be able to start?” Thomas asks.

“I'll bloody well have to,” Talbot says, and wipes the sweat off his neck with an oily rag.

“Won't it be a risk?”

Talbot looks at him, his eyes manic like Thomas has last seen them in the span of weeks when Talbot wasn't allowed to race at all. “If you breathe a word of this to Mary ---”

“I won't,” Thomas says.

“It's  _ not _ a risk,” Talbot insists. “I just don't want her to worry unnecessarily.”

He starts the engine again. It whirrs perfectly evenly for a few seconds, but then there's a persistent off-rhythm beat to it, subtle, but undeniably there. Both Thomas and Talbot listen intently for a minute, none the wiser after Talbot switches off the ignition.

“I don't like it,” Thomas says, and only realizes he has stepped out of line when Talbot looks at him with that raised eyebrow and mock half-grin.

“What do you suggest we do, Barrow?”

“I don't have a fix,” Thomas says, truthfully. “But I don't like it.”

“Great,” Talbot says. “Perhaps I'll let you drive, so if it all goes south at least it'll only be the valet who pays the price.”

His voice is dripping with sarcasm, and Thomas feels a patch of heat rise in his neck that has nothing to do with the boiling temperatures. 

Talbot dives back beneath the car and Thomas wills his hands to steadiness on the tools he passes on to Talbot, and takes care not to look him in the eyes when he does.

“God, Barrow, I said six!” Talbot sighs, when Thomas passes him the wrong wrench for the third time. “Where's your bloody mind today?”

Thomas closes his eyes for a second before he turns around to Talbot, his back rim-rod straight. “I'm sorry.” He wipes the sweat from his eyes and forehead with his sleeve, and holds out the correct wrench for Talbot to take. “It's just the heat.”

Talbot takes the wrench from his hand without even looking at him.

“You'll be in the stands today, Barrow,” he says. “With Mary. I don't want her anywhere near the tarmac in this heat. I’ll have one of the boys do the pit stop.”

Thomas opens his mouth to protest, but Talbot cuts him off.

“That'll be all.”

Thomas takes a breath the way he has learned dealing with Carson, and swallows the anger rising in his throat. He wipes his hands off on Talbot's oily rag, and when he leaves the stalls Talbot is already back at the engine, too focused to even take note of Thomas leaving.

\---

Thomas feels sick to his stomach with his hands on the banister of the stands, a spectator over the scene, the cars too far away, the drivers small from the distance.

“The air's much better up here,” Lady Mary says next to him, dabbing her forehead with her handkerchief and spinning her parasol on her shoulder. “But doesn't one long to be down there regardless. I suppose Henry is right, there is something addictive about it.”

Thomas regards her with little more than a glance and a nod, his lips tight.

“Is something the matter with you, Barrow?” she inquires.

“Just the heat, Milady,” Thomas replies, reprising the same tired excuse. His mind jumps for a second to the stutter in Talbot's engine, and how sharing it with Mary would feel like relief. But Talbot would consider it a betrayal, that much is for certain, and he wouldn't risk Talbot's fury for the world.

Mary has already turned her attention back to the racers.

“Here it comes,” she says, expertly spotting the referee and his flag amidst the crowd.

_ Here it comes indeed _ , Thomas thinks, the sun beating down on his hot, burning neck, his sweaty hands ice-cold regardless.

Thomas sees the shot before he hears it, the sound of it ringing out over the stands with a tangible delay. He watches the figure of Talbot in his white overall sprint to his car and start it, taking first position instantly. Next to him, Lady Mary is cheering. It's Talbot's best start of the season.

All Thomas can think about is who will check Talbot's tyres in the intermission, a hired hand? A rival's assistant? Or is Talbot hell-bent on relying on luck this time, with the asphalt boiling underneath his wheels and the air heavier and hotter than it has been all year? Thomas feels the blood rush in his ears, his mouth dry. Who will put a cold hand on the hood of his black lightning for as long as he stops, leaving the shadow of a handprint there that will evaporate as soon as the airstream picks up?

When the automobiles come racing around the track for the second round, Talbot is still on first position. He doesn't stop in the pit at all, he just keeps going.

Thomas thinks of last night, how the steering wheel felt less steady under his grip the faster he went, how it tugged and jerked to free itself from his grip and how much effort it took him to control the engine's magnificent power and keep the car straight on the road. How much harder it must be at the speed Talbot is going, and with the sun beating down, his hands sweaty.

_ Talbot is a professional _ , he tells himself. He's done this a thousand times. But then there's the hiccup, the off rhythm, accelerating with every gear Talbot climbs ---

And then the racers come back around for their third round, and Talbot's black lightning is not among them. Thomas concentrates as they are speeding away, through the air flickering on the tarmac. Did he miss it? But he counts eleven racers, not twelve, and next to him Lady Mary goes rigid, coming to the same conclusion in the exact same second.

Her hand grasps at his arm and they look up, locked in a strange, synchronized ballet of terror with everyone else on the stand, and they spot the lean, elegant pillar of smoke along with everyone else at the same time.

Mary is white as a sheet when he turns to her.

“You wait here,” Thomas says, and turns around, runs before he even knows it, shoving spectators to the side on the stand and wrestling his way down the crammed wooden stairs on the back. 

“There's a lady up there, look after her,” he shouts at a clueless lad in an oily overall and sprints on, jumps the barrier to their stall and is on the boiling tarmac only instants later. He is vaguely aware the other racers are stopping on the track, having themselves spotted the smoke, but something is still roaring in his ears, and it takes Thomas too long to realize it's not the engines, it's the frantic beat of his own heart.

He cuts through the shrubbery running as fast as he can, slipping on the sandy slopes leading back down to the track, falling, jostling himself back up again, not stopping to breathe or think, just running. He's on the tarmac again, stumbling, when he sees the black lightning at the side of the road, steam and smoke escaping from its hood --- and Talbot next to it, his hands propped to his hips in defeat. 

He sees him from a distance first, not more than a silhouette next to the tower of smoke rising, and then, when he comes closer, he sees his expression too, not scared, not hurt, annoyed at most.

Thomas slows his run to a walk, his heart still hammering in his chest, throat sore and sour from breathing too hard, and breathless at the same time, white spots flickering through his vision like fireflies. He feels like he could be sick. Talbot fully turns to him when he sees him approach, his eyes, blotches of white in his smoke-blackened face, widening.

“You ran,” Talbot says, uselessly, and sounds more amused than he has any right to be.

“Yes,” Thomas says, his own spit tasting bitter in his mouth. 

“It's just the bloody cooler,” Talbot says, gesturing towards the car.

And Thomas wants to bash the smug bloody grin off his face, but instead he points up to the rising column of smoke and then back with his thumb to where he suspects the stands, and says the one word he still has breath for: “Mary.”

And that has just the same effect. 

\---

Thomas stays behind on the boiling tarmac, where more men gather soon, racers, mechanics like him, some spectators even, clearly recognizable by their white linen summer suits, sleeves pushed up to the elbows and their elegant straw hats tilted back on their heads to reveal their sweaty, worried foreheads. Thomas sees the black lightning back to the stalls, he makes inquiries about Lady Mary and Talbot, and it’s only when he knows them up in the stands, shaken but safe and together, that he allows himself to break. He has their box to himself.

He thinks of Lady Mary's hard, panicked gaze and he wonders if  _ he _ looked the same, alone on the track facing Talbot, utterly unmasked. Recollecting it, the moment stretches into a small eternity, the smoke billowing slow and sluggish like mortar, and Talbot's gaze changing before Thomas even mentioned Mary, it was changing, but to what?

Thomas' lungs feel sore. He has hardly caught a breath since that moment. He presses both palms to the cold wall of the box, and when that doesn't help, he slaps them against it, creating a short sting of sensation in his numb mind and body. He cannot breathe. He cannot bloody breathe, and he's got Talbot to blame.

Talbot, who is happy with his lovely wife, Talbot who doesn't bloody care, why would he, about an  _ employee _ \---

Stupid, stupid, slipping again, unable to stop it. Caring too much, it's like he sees the slope every single time and jumps into it happily, thinking this time he'd be able to catch himself, to not destroy everything he touches ---

“Barrow.”

Thomas squares his shoulders and wipes his eyes before he turns around. There's Talbot in the door, peeled halfway out of his overalls, his shirt soaked through in patches. He's still covered in marks of oil and smoke, shimmering black on his skin. His face is flushed, his eyes bright, but beneath he looks exhausted.

“Do you need me?” Thomas asks, straightening his back, hoping the wetness on his face passes for sweat.

“Are you alright?” Talbot asks.

Thomas nods, curt, perfunctory. 

“They've cancelled the last round,” Talbot says. “The bloody tarmac's melted. I'll take Mary home in a minute. She's quite rattled.” He doesn't take his eyes off Thomas when he's done talking, like he normally does, but scrutinizes him instead. “Will you be alright on the train?”

“It's just the heat,” Thomas says, for the third time that day, hiding his shaking hands in his pockets.

He wishes Talbot would look away, but Talbot doesn't grant him the kindness. Instead he keeps his eyes fixed on him, searching. Whatever is he searching for, Thomas wonders, that's not plainly written on Thomas' face? What is there left to unriddle about him? Isn't he an open book?

“If I've been unkind, before ---” Talbot starts.

“You haven't,” Thomas interrupts him.

The edge of Talbot's mouth twitches, the shadow of a half-smile. “I think I may have been.”

“There's nothing to be sorry about,” Thomas says.

Talbot sighs. “Just – take the apology, will you?” he says. “Just bloody take it, Barrow. I'm trying to make up here.”

And Thomas understands he is being ordered to play the friend again, not the servant. The bloody idea of equality, he should have guessed. They are in a workshop, after all. So Thomas swallows his pride and nods, and tries a smile, and he sees it mirrored and blooming on Talbot's face immediately.

“I am asking you again, Barrow,” Talbot says. “Will you be alright on the train?”

“Yes,” Thomas says, as a friend. There isn't much of a difference between the friend and the servant in the end. The sacrifices the servant makes he makes for duty, while the friend sacrifices for --- what? Loyalty? Wouldn't that also fall into the servant's lot?

There is love, of course. Thomas' heart speeds up at the mere thought of it. The things he has done for love have had a way of coming back to punish him, every single one of them, to a degree that he found himself flinching at the idea of feeling it again.

But whatever this is, whatever they are, it’s merely pretend. To Talbot it’s a game he plays to keep himself entertained, and to Thomas --- it doesn’t matter what it is to Thomas, in the end, as long as he does his job.

\---

Thomas barely sleeps that night. The linen sticks to his sweaty shoulders until he kicks it away, and then the night air grasps at him, too cold to ignore. The train ride was hell, with nausea still clinging to the back of his throat, and the air thick and liquid between the sweat-soaked passengers. Knowing Talbot in the car with Mary at his side, comforted and comfortable, was only little relief.

He sits up in an attempt to clear his head from the thoughts running round and round, chasing their own tails until he feels dizzy. It is quiet behind the door connecting their bedrooms. He assumes Lady Mary sleeps deeply on a night like this. She has exhausted herself. Talbot might be awake, quiet, just as shaken as Thomas is.

Quietly, Thomas gets up, but instead of opening the door, breaching the separation between upstairs and downstairs that has become merely symbolic, he slips on his robe and exits to the hallway, walks down the stairs into the cold pub. The fires are out. They haven't been on in weeks. The servants' efforts have been with keeping the heat out, boarding up the windows as soon as the sun rose. Now the shutters are open, allowing the night air to wash the heavy heat of the day out of the dark rooms.

Thomas crosses the taproom to the kitchen and helps himself to a glass of water. It's only when the cool water runs down his throat that he realizes how his system has overheated, running hot on those circulating thoughts.

“Can't sleep?”

Thomas wheels around, almost dropping the glass in his hand. “I'm sorry ---”

Then he spots the lithe figure sitting on a table against the wall – not the cook, and most definitely not a servant girl. She wears a robe over her nightgown, her bare legs crossed at the ankles.

“Lady Mary,” he says, reflexively smoothing his hands down the front of his robe.

“It's quite impossible to find rest in this heat, isn't it,” Lady Mary says.

“Quite,” Thomas responds, on guard.

He sees her dark eyes shine, catching some of the low light from the street.

“Is there anything I may help you with?” he offers.

She shakes her head. Even in the night, her fashionable haircut shines smooth and bright like a helmet on top of her long, white neck. She runs her hands over her face. When she looks back at him, her face is bare, stripped of the cool veneer of propriety she usually wears.

“He sleeps like a dead man,” she says, nodding vaguely up, to where their rooms are located. “It wears him out, racing,” she says. “You'd think it'd wear  _ me _ out, with all the worrying ---”

She laughs quietly. “It wears  _ you  _ out, too,” she says, and from the way she looks at him he knows she is asking him a question.

Thomas takes a deep breath, considers denying, but Lady Mary has let her guard down, and the least he could do is repay her the favour. He nods, and falls back against the sink, his hands supporting him against the cold stone.

She catches his nod and echoes it. She, too, has braced her arms against the edge of the table she is sitting on. 

“It doesn't do to worry all the time,” she says, not to him, or anyone. 

She looks at him. “We're quite alike, aren't we, Barrow?” Thomas thinks he catches hope in her voice. “You worry about him. You lose sleep. And you are  _ very  _ good at keeping up the pretence, if I may say so. I could learn a thing or two from you.”

Thomas listens, his mouth dry, his heart beating wildly, still unsure of her meaning. She is right, of course – they are both masters of self-disguise, although for wildly different reasons. He wonders if she has guessed his, and if this will be the end of his reprieve at the Small House. He adds up the hours until sunrise. There would be enough time to pack a suitcase and catch the first train, without ever having to look at Talbot again.

But Lady Mary's shoulder slack, and her head drops between them.

“I just need to know I am not running mad,” she says, and now the balance breaks towards desperation.

Thomas lets go of the breath he was holding. Lady Mary isn't talking about him. This was only ever about herself.

“You aren't,” Thomas says, finding his voice. If this was Talbot and this was a workshop, he might have dared to cross the distance, but this is Lady Mary at night in a pub's kitchen, and Thomas doesn't budge from his spot by the sink.

“You aren't,” he repeats instead, steadier. “You've lost someone before. It's not mad to fear for that again.”

“Then what is your excuse, Barrow?” she asks, looking up at him.

Thomas finds the words stuck in his throat. How to explain to her that every single time he has loved, he has lost? But if the day has gone to show anything, it is that it’s not the racing that keeps Thomas awake at night. If Talbot died tomorrow in a burning wreck on the tarmac, at least he would never have the chance to turn Thomas away. So it’s an intricate mess of a situation, in which Thomas will end up on the losing side, whatever happens.

Thomas feels sick, coming to that realization with Lady Mary's eyes still on his face.

“I am happier here than I was at the Abbey,” Thomas says simply, and it's not a full lie. 

“I can tell,” Lady Mary says. She laughs again, lowly. “We make quite the pair, don't we? Happier than ever, despite all this.”

Thomas cannot help but laugh with her. It ripples from his ribcage, feeling dry and foreign, escapes him before he can stop himself.

Lady Mary catches his glance, and returns it softer than he has ever seen her. “We should try to get some rest,” she says, straightens her shoulders and jumps off the edge of the table. As soon as her feet touch the ground she is all posture again, the edges of her coiffure razor-sharp, the mask back in place.

But before she leaves for the taproom, she turns around to him again.

“Thank you, Thomas,” she says, and vanishes through the door, leaving Thomas to the empty, cold kitchen.

\---

Lady Mary accompanies Talbot to every race of the season after that, sometimes with George, sometimes leaving him with Mrs Williams, and there is not one more accident in the twenty-three races Talbot drives until September. He comes to call her his lucky charm, omitting – or perhaps forgetting – that she was there for the cooler incident in June, and for the death of Charlie Rogers before that, when they weren't even married. 

Thomas sees to his duties, spit-shines the black lightening before and after every race, and takes the old service car back to their accommodation, while Talbot and Lady Mary race ahead.

He sees less of Talbot alone with Mary there all the time, but his heart does not quiet down all summer. 

For a while Thomas had hoped the conversation in the pub kitchen would do the trick, that knowing Lady Mary's vulnerability would help him to stop thinking about her husband like that – and it does help during the day, when Thomas has a steady rein on his thoughts. But at night his mind wanders, and wanders inevitably to whatever room Talbot is sleeping in. It does not help that Talbot undresses unabashedly in front of him in the stalls, and asks Thomas to rub balm into his tense shoulders after the race, his skin still hot from the rush of adrenaline. 

But that is all that ever happens. No furtive glances of the kind Thomas thought he had spotted from Jimmy Kent a lifetime ago. Nothing like blind Edward Courtenay's soft-spoken words. Not the bold hand finding its place during a dinner party, with which the Duke of Crowborough had made himself known. Thomas is fluent in a lot of languages and in none of them. For Talbot he doesn't need to be, he reminds himself. Talbot is a happily married man, if anything happier now than when Thomas first came into the house. And if Thomas wants to touch him in every way he knows how, well, then that has to find its time in the early morning hours and its place irrevocably in fantasy.


	5. Five

Accompanying Talbot to London is what pushes the year squarely into autumn. Amidst the racing, the Talbots have neglected the capital over the summer, and now, as the days grow shorter, wetter and colder, apparently its heated rooms and vibrant company seem to be exerting their pull again. Talbot doesn't go into specifics when he announces the trip to Pall Mall, only asks Thomas to pack both evening suits. Thomas expects Talbot to spend the nights at the club with men of his kind, and, if he can't be racing himself, at least talking over the races of the past season, a straight-forward weekend between straight-forward men --- or so Thomas thinks, when Talbot summons him to his room on their first night.

“Get changed, Barrow, you are coming downstairs.” Talbot makes the order like he would make a gift, with a wide smile and a spark in his eyes, already expecting Thomas' gratefulness. He watches Thomas' reaction through the hotel room's full-length mirror.

A knot ties in Thomas' stomach. 

“What?” he says, then catches himself. “That wouldn’t be appropriate.” And then, when Talbot doesn’t relent: “I have nothing to wear for the occasion.”

“You've packed the second suit, haven't you,” Talbot says.

It’s then that Thomas understands he has been tricked. “What if I don’t want to?” he asks, too blunt for his position, but it was Talbot who has crossed the line first.

“We could call it an order, Barrow,” Talbot says, a sly smile around his mouth, “if that makes it easier for you.”

Thomas presses his lips shut.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” Talbot says, slapping a hand on Thomas' upper arm, a friend again now, knowing full well Thomas couldn't possibly refuse. “You will like it, I promise,” Talbot insists. “Take it as recompense for a season of service. Excellent service, I might add.”

Thomas swallows hard and tries to not feel Talbot’s appreciative gaze too deeply. And then he puts on the suit and follows Talbot downstairs.

\---

So that night Thomas enters the Royal Automobile Club not as a servant, but as a gentleman. Not a gentleman the likes of which he brushes shoulders with on his way down to the banquet hall, because he assumes none of their suits are borrowed, and none of their necks prickle like a schoolboy's who is skipping class, but as a gentleman nonetheless. Any moment he expects someone to call him out. He has done hundreds of trips to London's clubs with Lord Grantham, if not to this specific one. Thomas is sure he has served some of the gentlemen occupying the banquet hall's square tables.

That night it's Thomas' turn to be served, and he hates every second of it. He hates the way Talbot's suit sits too tight in his armpits, and he is sweating through his shirt for sure, and most of all he hates Talbot's self-satisfied smile across the table. It's like Talbot can't stop laughing at him every time their gazes cross.

“What,” Talbot says, when Thomas still has barely touched his food a good half-hour after it arrived. “It's just dinner.”

“I'm not used to it, is all,” Thomas replies.

Talbot's foot nudges Thomas' shin under the table. “Come on,” he says. “Smile.”

Thomas wouldn't know where to find one.

“Surely you'd be hungry at least,” Talbot says, nodding towards the unfinished meal on Thomas' plate. The food at the club is very good. Only Thomas can't get the footmen's gloved hands out of his mind that served it to him, and he feels their eyes on his neck. He keeps his head down. As sure as he has served some of the gentlemen, he has gulped down his own food in the servants' hall with some of the footmen, exchanged stories and smokes. If anything they are likelier than their employers to recognize him, if perhaps not as likely to call him out.

Talbot reclines in his chair, whips the napkin from his lap and starts playing with its edges. At this rate Thomas wouldn't be surprised if he propped his knee against the table's edge and tipped his chair back like a bloody schoolboy. 

Talbot takes a sip of his wine. “Are you finished?”

Thomas' glass is still full. It'd be reckless to let his guard down, he supposes. Talbot looks at him across the table. He's gotten bored with the napkin and is spinning is empty wine glass in his hands. He is still looking at Thomas as if there was something utterly amusing about the picture, and there probably is. Thomas feels like a paper doll folded into the ill-fitting cardboard cut-out of a suit.

But it wouldn't be Talbot watching him if there wasn't also something of a dare about it, his gaze needling Thomas on to a point where passive compliance would mean defeat. Thomas reaches out for his full glass of wine and empties it in a single swing. The acidity of it almost turns his stomach, and he feels his face flush red with it, and a wave of warmth wash through his entire body. He sets the glass down.

“I'm finished,” he says.

“Good,” Talbot says, jumping to his feet as if he'd been waiting for his cue. “Come on.”

And without further decorum Talbot walks out of the banquet hall towards the main entrance of the club, leaving the half-emptied plates at their table. There's nothing Thomas can do but follow. The wine doesn't make it any easier.

“I take it you have never been to Lady Austin's?” Talbot asks, his shoulder bumping against Thomas' in the dark. 

Talbot has, for some ungodly reason, hailed one of the few hansom cabs left in the city, that takes them towards Mayfair, and then, before they pass into Marylebone, turns right towards Hyde Park. The sour tang of the horse makes a stark difference to the engine fumes Thomas has gotten used to, although he finds something familiar about the swaying, unsteady speed of the carriage, and familiarity, like comfort, is hard to come by these days. For the first time in a long time he doesn't feel quite out of his depth.

“Who's Lady Austin?” Thomas asks, suddenly brave. 

To his surprise, Talbot laughs. “Never mind,” he says. “You'll like her.”

Lady Austin wears a wide-brimmed feathered hat the likes of which Thomas hasn't seen the Ladies Grantham wear in ages, and dark lines across her eyelids that give her face a lazy, cat-like appearance. She extends her gloved hand for them and Talbot, all form, plants an elegant kiss on it.

“And who have you brought, Mr Talbot?” Lady Austin asks, voice dark, and turns her feline eyes towards Thomas.

“A friend,” Talbot says. “Barrow, Lady Austin. I don't suppose you have met.”

“A friend,” Lady Austin echoes, her disconcerting eyes fixed on Thomas.

“We'll see,” Talbot says.

“Now, don't start trouble, Henry,” Lady Austin says, mock scolding, and ends in a laugh that sends her Adam's apple bobbing.

“You know me, Madam, I wouldn't dare,” Talbot says, and indicates Thomas with a look to follow him down the staircase into a narrow basement corridor.

“She's a man,” Talbot says, needlessly, when he takes Thomas' coat. “Give me your dinner jacket, too.”

Talbot shrugs off his own jacket, unceremoniously hanging both of theirs on a line of hooks by the wall. Thomas mind jumps to the creases he’s going to have to steam out of them before tomorrow’s dinner and it briefly calms him down - thinking that there is a tomorrow waiting beyond this strange night, a tomorrow that accommodates for such mundane tasks as straightening out a dinner jacket.

“Here,” Talbot says, in shirt sleeves, grabbing Thomas' wrist. He unhooks the cufflink, stowing it carefully in his pocket, and rolls the sleeve up. “Let's make you look the part.”

The steep stairway has led them down to a dark hallway, although there seems to be light and life in a room on the far end of it. Thomas hears gaudy music coming from it and the excited chatter of voices. There's a band playing, there must be dancing, too. If he has a suspicion about where this is going, he tries not to follow up on it, only wonders briefly how he could possibly turn down the gift if Talbot was feeling generous. He hopes the whores are discreet.

Having finished with Thomas', Talbot rolls his own shirt sleeves up. “Tie,” he says to Thomas, unfastening his. It takes Thomas' clumsy fingers a moment to undo his own. The red wine was probably ill-advised, he thinks, or maybe it was his smartest decision of this odd night. 

“Alright,” Talbot says, having given Thomas' getup a scrutinizing look and, with a nod, approved of it. “Let's go.”

And again left without a choice, Thomas follows.

But down the corridor to the left lies no brothel, no private parlour, not even a speakeasy the likes of which Thomas has seen during his brief visit to America – it's nothing Thomas even knew how to imagine. It's a long room with a vaulted brick ceiling, bright with gas lamps and tinsel, there is a stage at the far end with a band playing, and there are people dancing – and it's not the band or the tinsel or the ceiling that make Thomas stop the second he enters the room. It's the people. It's men with men and women with women, it's men who look like women and women who dress like men and some which Thomas, despite his best intention, couldn't sort into either category in the dim light. And they're all dancing, and nobody bats an eye.

“Thought you'd like that,” Talbot says next to him. “Come on.” He grabs Thomas' elbow and navigates him towards the bar, across the dance floor full of bodies that seem to exist outside of any and every rule Thomas has ever been taught.

Thomas focuses on his feet, and at the bar Talbot pushes a clear drink with a cucumber in it into his hands, and then Thomas focuses on that.

“You can look,” Talbot says, lounging against the bar and sipping on his drink, entirely relaxed, possibly more relaxed than Thomas has ever seen him. The manic energy, the incessant vibrato, seems gone from him. He's smiling. Thomas follows his gaze and sees two men on the dance floor embracing, then kissing. The taller one's hand rests on the shorter one's neck.

Every feeling that had left his hands and feet earlier with the numbness of the red wine is now returning, prickling, burning. “I have to go,” Thomas says.

Thomas sets down his drink on the bar, spilling some of it, and starts across the room. Panic starts blooming in his chest at the thought of walking amidst the dancers again, rubbing shoulders with them, being associated with them purely by proximity.

“Thomas, wait,” Talbot says. “Thomas!”

He catches Thomas' sleeve before Thomas can slip away. Thomas stops. Talbot's hand grasps his lower arm, and his eyes ---

If Talbot had looked angry or commanding, or sly in the way he did over the dinner table, Thomas would have jerked his arm from his grasp and disappeared. But Talbot looks sorry, and that changes everything.

“I should have warned you,” Talbot says. “Perhaps I was wrong to bring you here.”

Now this, finally, is the one language Thomas speaks, the in-between. Talbot is offering him a dignified lie, and that alone is enough to make Thomas want to stay. It's hard to find the breath to voice it. After a few failed attempts that stretch into a long silence between them, Thomas says, “No.”

Talbot just nods. “Good.”

It only takes that one word, paired with a smile, for everything to shift. It's like the iron band around his chest has finally snapped. Thomas takes a shaky, deep breath for what feels like the first time in forever. The air is so heavy with cigarette smoke it drives tears to his eyes.

“Good, breathe,” Talbot says, moving his hand from Thomas' lower arm to his shoulder as Thomas approaches the bar again. “Breathe, and drink, but stay,” he says, pushing the glass back into Thomas' hands. “I know, it’s a lot the first few times.”

Thomas drinks, startlingly aware of Talbot’s hand still on his shoulder. He looks out at the dancers, because suddenly that feels safer than to look at Talbot. He and the Lady Austin had seemed familiar.

“You can ask,” Talbot offers into their silence.

“You've been here often?” Thomas says.

“I come here almost every time I'm in town,” Talbot says. “Well, not  _ here _ , necessarily. But there are other places. There's always something.”

“Why?” Thomas asks. He expects to hear Talbot laugh at the stupidity of the question, but Talbot’s voice remains level.

“It gets tired being just one thing at all times, don't you think?” Talbot says.

Thomas considers that. He's only ever known how to be one thing, and here of all places is not the place to be different about it.

“I didn't mean to expose you,” Talbot says. “Or to embarrass you by bringing you here. I did think you’d enjoy it.”

Thomas doesn’t ask how long Talbot has known. The answer is bound to scare him.

“Who told you?” Thomas asks instead. “Lady Mary?”

“She didn’t have to.” There’s a pause. “Of course, for some time I was only hoping.”

Thomas looks up. There has to be that tell-tale smile that marks the mockery, surely. But Talbot just returns Thomas’ gaze, and now Thomas understands that this is not only about  _ him _ being exposed, it’s also Talbot exposing part of himself. They are both equally vulnerable in this and for the first time Thomas feels something like balance between them.

“Please don’t think I’m asking anything of you, except to keep me company,” Talbot says.

Thomas’ mouth is suddenly dry. “That’s not ---” He doesn’t know where he’s going with the sentence when Talbot interrupts him.

“Good,” Talbot repeats, but this time he relaxes with it, shrugs the brief intensity of their conversation off his shoulders. “Now, let’s enjoy ourselves. There’ll be plenty of opportunity to talk.”

Talbot smiles at a man passing them, tall, who returns Talbot’s gaze. He looks like any bloke you’d meet in the street, and like nobody Thomas has ever seen. The unabashed way with which he mirrors Talbot’s smile, the way he aligns his body towards theirs, unconcerned with hiding what he wants ---

“Thomas,” Talbot says. “Would you like to dance?”

Thomas’ mind takes a second to catch up with the exhilarating present. The man is looking at him now, and Talbot seconds his gaze.

“I’m ---” Thomas starts. He’s a good-looking fellow, that much is for certain. It would be easier if he wasn’t. “No,” Thomas says, weakly.

The other man’s smile never falters. “Shame,” he says. “I’ll be around if you change your mind.” He tips the brim of his cap at Talbot and winds his tall body back between the people on the dance floor.

“That could have been fun,” Talbot says.

“I’m not ---” Somewhere in the course of the night Thomas has lost his ability to form a full sentence. “I’m not used to fun,” he finishes lamely.

“Would you _ like _ to dance?” Talbot repeats. Thomas looks out at the dancers, their mirroring bodies forming symmetrical pairs. There’s a lump forming in his throat, his palms are sweaty, his body still too used to protecting him from the breach he now considers crossing.

Talbot holds out his hand. “May I have the honour?”

“I don’t need you to take pity on me,” Thomas says, sharper than he intended.

“But you need  _ something, _ ” Talbot insists.

It’s not like the challenges Thomas is used to from Talbot. This, paired with the expression in his eyes, feels like a gift. And who would see them? Who would know? Just them and a room full of London’s deviants, and in a twist that surprises Thomas that suddenly seems like very few people.

In a gesture that feels very much like accelerating to a speed the human body was not made for, Thomas takes Talbot’s hand and follows him onto the dance floor.

Contrary to the frequency Thomas’ heart is beating at, there is no speed to their dancing, there’s not enough room for that. The crowded space forces them to turn tight around a narrow axis, Talbot’s arm around Thomas’ waist and Thomas’ hand on Talbot’s shoulder, their shirt fronts touching. Thomas smells Talbot’s cologne so intensely he can almost taste it on his tongue.

“Breathe,” Talbot says, his mouth by Thomas’ ear, their cheeks brushing. Thomas would, but feels like he’d drown if he dared to.

The music has settled into a lilting rhythm and they turn slowly, just one cogwheel of many between the other couples. At some point Thomas’ heart stops beating fast, and beats hard and slow instead. Thomas treads softly, breathes softly, thinks softly. Expects the bubble to burst any second. But Talbot just hums in his ear and turns and turns, and with every turn some of the terrible anticipation dissipates, until Thomas tentatively allows himself to believe that this is not a dream.

“This is good, isn’t it?” Talbot says.

Thomas nods, knowing that Talbot will feel it. He can feel Talbot smile. Talbot’s hand spreads against Thomas’ back, broad and solid, and even though gravity seems to be losing its grip on him, Thomas has never felt more grounded.

Talbot tilts his head back to look at Thomas. He’s smiling, content and still a little incredulous.

“I could kiss you now,” he says.

Thomas’ stomach drops, the reflex of panic deeply ingrained, but Talbot’s face is unchanged: serious, guileless, open.

“Think of it as an education,” Talbot says. “Your debut, your first season.”

“I’ve been kissed before,” Thomas says, a little more defensively than he means to.

“Not like this you haven’t,” Talbot says, and of course he is right. Not like this, with people watching, and what’s perhaps strangest about it:  _ wanting _ people to watch, wanting witnesses for this wanting, this aching that he’s felt for as long as he can remember. 

_ If a tree falls in a forest with no one around to hear, does it make a sound? _ , was a question Mr Moseley had once posed to Daisy back at the Abbey, and that had almost led to a physical fight among the footmen. The answer had comforted Thomas then. It had erased everything Thomas hated about his past, down to the last stain on his conscience. Nothing is ever fully real unless there is a witness, and Thomas has always made sure there were none. 

He kisses Talbot softly, slowly, the way he has learned in private, and it sets his whole body aflame, the way Talbot smiles into it. Talbot’s lips part under Thomas’, their bodies fit into each other, and Talbot breathes him in, his eyes shut.

“I knew we were the same,” Talbot says when they part. Talbot’s hand rests on Thomas’ neck now.

“Me, too,” Thomas says, slightly out of breath, and suddenly believes it.

Later, Lady Austin takes the stage. The microphone crackles and whistles when she croons her soft song into it, in a voice so convincingly a lady’s Thomas could have been fooled had Talbot not told him earlier.

“Friends,” Lady Austin says, when she has finished to thunderous applause, “deviants, perverts, gutter-dwellers here present…”

The crowd roars. Next to Thomas, Talbot gives her a wolf whistle.

“... what a wonderful night to spend in your company!” She curtsies to the catcalls from the audience. There’s no malice on either side, Thomas suddenly notices. It feels like a ritual of sorts, with everyone playing their parts.

“What a pleasure and a privilege to see all your beautiful faces - your _ true _ faces!” she continues to the cheers of the audience. “We may hide them during the days, but the nights belong to us.”

Thomas realizes Talbot is still holding his hand, a gesture so natural in this environment he didn’t even stop to think about it.

“And to those who would spit in our faces if they saw us like this,” continues Lady Austin, “I have only one thing to say: Just because we’re invisible doesn’t mean we don’t exist. We are  _ everywhere _ . And there will come a time when we’ll no longer have to hide.”

Talbot presses Thomas’ hand, and when Thomas looks over he finds him beaming. 

“We’ll live it yet, you’ll see,” Talbot says.

The band starts up again, the couples around them start dancing, and Thomas feels a warmth swell inside of him he hasn’t known before. It’s not love, or at least not just that. Maybe it’s hope, maybe it’s just, for once, the absence of fear. He pulls Talbot close, feels him laugh against his chest, and laughs with him, exhilarated and breathless, falling, twirling, tumbling in love.


	6. Six

They get their jackets and coats in the corridor, their warmth still caught between them, still rubbing shoulders with others walking past, and then they get to the street, the cobblestone lined silver in the moonlight, and a cold wind blows, and a car rattles by, and the whole thing vanishes like a spell, evaporated into thin air.

Talbot shrugs himself deeper into his coat and Thomas wants to cry.

“Walk with me?” Talbot says.

Thomas buries his hands in his pockets and falls into step next to Talbot. What choice does he have?

The street looks like any other London street at night, the house fronts grey and frowning, the air heavy with fog. It seems unbelievable now that only moments ago they stepped out of a pocket of tinsel, vibrant and loud and warm. The band had played faster, and they had danced. At no point during the night they hadn’t been touching.

“We have to talk about what happens now,” Talbot says.

Thomas’ lungs fill with cold October air and his head, dizzy from the alcohol and the touch of another man’s hands, suddenly feels almost clear again.

“I hate it as much as you do, but there’s no point pretending that one life exists without the other,” Talbot says. “Believe me, I have tried.”

Thomas nods. “You’re married.”

“I’m  _ happily _ married,” Talbot specifies, and even though Thomas knows this, has known this for quite some time, it stings now.

“Does Lady Mary know?” Thomas asks. It feels odd, calling her  _ Lady _ now, like their relationship has, by association to Talbot, shifted into something much more intimate than that in the past few hours.

“About other people, yes,” Talbot says. “Not other men.” He looks at Thomas. “Certainly not you.”

“She can’t find out,” Thomas says, just to say something. It’s not like this is the point that needs debating. It’s just one of those sentences that naturally follows a moment like the one they just shared, like  _ I’m not like that _ , or  _ This can’t ever happen again _ .

“What do _ you _ want to happen?” Talbot asks, his eyes still on Thomas.

It momentarily surprises Thomas - he expected an order from Talbot, like he is used to, not a question. It’s a trick, of course. There’s what Thomas wants and then there’s what he needs --- he  _ wants _ Talbot on a bed, slow, bare, but that’s just bodily functions. He  _ needs _ a future beyond, with Talbot or without, and Talbot knows as well as Thomas does that between the two of them it’s not Thomas who is free to want anything at all. In the end it’s always about what Thomas is willing to sacrifice for a short stretch of companionship, or what his price is to stay silent.

Thomas feels helpless anger rise in his throat like bile.

“You’re going to make _ me  _ end this?” he says, his voice sharper than he intended.

For a moment, Talbot looks genuinely taken aback. “That’s not what I asked.”

“No? What do you want me to say, then? Do you want me to beg?” 

Talbot’s expression shifts into something colder. “I was doing you a favour.”

“I never asked for favours,” Thomas bites.

Talbot has the audacity to look disappointed. Incredulous, even. “Don’t pretend you didn’t need this.”

Thomas scoffs.

“Come on!” Talbot says, finally arriving at anger. “You tried to kill yourself because you’re so bloody afraid to be somebody in this world.”

He could as well have slapped Thomas in the face. 

“You know  _ nothing _ about me,” Thomas says, spitting the words onto the pavement in front of Talbot’s feet.

The cold air settles in the space between them, freezes there, before either of them speaks again.

“You’re not the first, you know,” Thomas says, his voice raw. “I’ve known men like you all my life, men who play nice and tease and prod and take whatever they want and call it  _ help _ . I’m done with it.”

“Oh yeah?” Talbot returns. “I’ve known your kind, too. Men who’d rather die than dare to be happy for once, who go around blaming everybody but themselves. I tell you what, Thomas. You’ll be miserable all your life, but it won’t be because you’re a bloody fairy, it will be because you’re too goddamn afraid to do something about it.”

Talbot’s jaw is taunt, his eyes icy, and he oozes an air of superiority that makes Thomas’ stomach turn.

“What, like  _ you _ did something about it?” Thomas looks at Talbot, doesn’t flinch away from his gaze. “ _ Happily _ married, did you say? Racing, dining, dancing with blokes after dark, in secret?” He takes a step closer. “Wooing your bloody valet? What do they call that when you’re rich, a metropolitan lifestyle?” His voice is heavy with bile. “You know what they call  _ me _ ? Foul. How does that sound?”

Talbot almost laughs. “Oh, you’re a bloody snob.”

For a white-hot, exhilarating second Thomas thinks he will hit Talbot in the face, he feels the muscles in his hands and arms tensing for it already, but then his self-preservation gets the better of him and Thomas just raises his hands to Talbot’s chest and shoves him, as hard as he can, can’t stand the idea of the other man this close anymore, looking at him, imparting judgement. Talbot stumbles for a second, then catches himself. He looks back at Thomas with unbridled surprise. 

“Not everyone is born lucky, Mr Talbot,” Thomas says, only tired all of a sudden. It’s like all his anger has evaporated in the short, sweet outburst of violence. “Not everybody can afford a life like yours.”

Talbot smoothes out his lapels, straightens his back. But something about their hierarchy feels unsettled now, like they’re treading new ground, figuring it out as they go.

“If it makes a difference,” Talbot starts, a touch of defiance in his voice, “you are the first valet I have wooed.”

He watches Thomas closely, alert, reading him - for what? Weakness? Another sign of violence?

“I like you very much, Thomas,” Talbot says eventually. “I suppose I thought that was enough.”

It sinks like a stone in Thomas’s gut: once upon a time that would have been enough, more than enough. But now, here, with what has been said - he can’t be content with it anymore. It’s always like that, isn’t it? It’s always going to be one step away from complete.

There is something different about Talbot’s expression now. It’s not fear, but something softer, something warmer. It borders on curiosity.

“What is it you want, Thomas,” Talbot asks, as if it was impossible for him to unriddle it, “Really, what is it you  _ want _ ?”

The answer is so simple, yet so completely unutterable. How much of a fool would Thomas make of himself, just asking, _ begging _ to be loved? Why would he even ask for something he knows Talbot is incapable of offering? The world is not a golden womb, after all. It’s cold and dark, and cruel to the likes of them.

They were lovers only minutes ago and now they are two men again, standing too close to each other in a foggy street at night. The street lights produce deep, sharp shadows, hiding half of everything and not nearly enough. In the end, there’s always the wanting that never goes away. If Thomas had an ounce of bravery in him he’d reach out and take Talbot’s hand, but it’s like Talbot says: he’s too goddamn afraid, and it doesn’t matter that he has good reason to be. In the end, it will always keep him from happiness.

Thomas almost turns to leave, but tonight, in the hazy light of the streetlamps, it’s Talbot who removes his own hand from his pocket and slips it into Thomas’, intertwines their fingers in the warmth he finds there and doesn’t let go. 

\---

“Henry,” Thomas says. The name feels odd in his mouth, intimate. He has called other men by their given names before, but this is different. 

Talbot lets his hand trail down Thomas’ side until, at Thomas’ hip, it reaches the edge of the bedsheet Thomas has covered himself with while Talbot was out. Talbot, of course, returned from the bathroom unabashedly naked, and now Thomas feels stupid for ever being ashamed.

Talbot has thrown himself onto the bed next to Thomas. He’s lying on his side, his head propped up on one arm, the other reaching out between them. Thomas’ heart is beating up a storm, none of the blood reaches his brain.

The times he has been with men before have been instinctive. Most often it was desire sparked by as much as an opportunity. Sometimes it was pure survival - let it happen so as to maintain employment, invisibility, hierarchy, you name it. But it was always his body in control, his brain lagging behind if present at all, an automatic, animalistic procedure.

This -- this isn’t as much a choice as the inevitable end postponed, a short, bright reprieve in which none of the rules Thomas has learned apply. They have interrupted the natural flow of events. They have undressed in separate rooms. This is not chance, nor opportunity alone, this is deliberate. Intentional. This is new. 

“May I?” Talbot asks, like he has asked Thomas to dance before, his fingertips on the edge of the sheet. But this is not for the witnesses.

Thomas clumsily scoots closer to kiss Talbot before Talbot can slide his hand under it. He feels Talbot’s mouth widen into a smile under his own when Talbot catches the weight of him, one hand easy on Thomas’ shoulder.

“I suppose kissing is as good a start as any,” Talbot says, and pulls Thomas in.

And they kiss until it stops containing the heat between them, until it spills and grows uncontrolled. Soon Thomas runs his lips along every bit of exposed skin he can find, the salt and the bitter taste of Talbot’s cologne, and Talbot does the same to him, his hands not searching, not exploring, not anything as poignant, just roaming, revelling in it.

“What do you want me to do?” Talbot asks, feverishly, when they are both hard and out of breath, their skins radiating heat, and Thomas’ stupid mouth almost says  _ Love me _ \---

“Touch me,” Thomas’ brain supplies instead, and the way they are now that’s almost the same thing.

Talbot smiles when his hand slips between them, where the sheet has long fallen away, and closes around Thomas’ cock. It’s nothing Thomas hasn’t felt before, a gasp, a shortness of breath, his nerves suddenly electrified, and with it the old instinct flicks awake and Thomas ruts into it, desperate.

“Shh,” Talbot says. He stills Thomas with a hand to his cheek, a look into his eyes, not feverish now, not hot and demanding, but quiet and calm, at ease. “Slowly.”

Talbot shifts his body under Thomas’, scoots down on the mattress until their cocks align and he can close his hand around both. Thomas, propped up on his arms so as to not rest his whole weight on Talbot’s rib cage, feels his muscles burn with the strain, but doesn’t dare to move until Talbot gives his next order. 

“Thomas,” Talbot says. “Breathe.”

Thomas exhales shakily, and feels the last of his strength leave his body with it. But Talbot’s hand is on his side, softly, guiding his body down, and Thomas doesn’t fight it anymore - allows his arms to curl around Talbot’s neck and his chest to settle against Talbot’s.

“Good,” Talbot says, and kisses his lips, and Thomas is sure he makes an effort to match his own breathing to Thomas’. Their rib cages rise and fall against each other, perfectly aligned. It’s easy kissing Talbot like that, just giving in to gravity.

It’s only when Talbot starts moving that Thomas realizes their cocks are still caught in the heat between them, Talbot’s fist around them. When Talbot rolls his hips, once, slow and deliberate, Thomas feels it through his entire body. He wants to prop himself up again, wants to fuck the way he has learned in dark alleys and strangers’ beds, the instinctive urge his first and best friend with time always scarce, discovery always looming. But Talbot, again, stills him, his hand fanned cool on Thomas’ side.

“Look at me,” Talbot says, and rolls his hips again. 

“Henry, I ---” Thomas has no air left in his lungs to finish his sentence. Every instinct has left his body, even the one to breathe.

“We have time, Thomas,” Talbot says. He rolls his hips steadily, slowly, where he finds the self-control for it, Thomas has no idea. Talbot fits their mouths together again until they breathe the same air, every last of their rhythms aligned, heart, breath, rolling of hips, their gasps and moans, and Thomas feels himself disappear into it, becomes all jerk and gasp and shaking breath. Talbot’s eyes never once leave Thomas’ face and with every thrust that drives the air out of Thomas’ lungs, Thomas begins to understand that there is a difference between an itch scratched for quick satisfaction and  _ this _ : feeling each other deeply and fully, slowly, without rush, to the end. 

_ Love me _ , he almost demanded, and now Talbot does. For the first time Thomas feels his body move in accordance with his brain, and it makes every cell of his body light up with sensation. He wants with everything he has, every fibre of his being, every part of him, their rhythm unsteady now, fast, urgent, and when he arches his back, bites the tendon in Talbot’s shoulder, Talbot gives a startled gasp and comes.

Talbot shares his orgasm like he shared his breathing, his heartbeat, it hits Thomas like a tidal wave and only instants later Thomas, too, is gone, every last bit of tenseness in his body exploding into heat.

When he comes down from it, he feels only soft. Talbot pushes the hair from Thomas’ eyes, a cool hand on his glowing forehead, and smiles giddily at what must be a face blotchy red, delirious. Thomas is almost sure the vibration of Talbot’s laughter makes his skin ripple like jelly. And like the orgasm before it, the laughter catches and sparks in Thomas’ chest, and when they try to kiss each other next, they’re both smiling too hard for it.

“Has it been long?” Talbot asks, after. Thomas has rolled off of him, and Talbot lies stretched out on his back, their legs still tangled. The back of Thomas’ neck rests in the crook of Talbot’s left arm. Sweat is drying on their skin, finally cooling, their chests still heaving in unison. Thomas would reach out to the nightstand for a smoke, but his arm feels entirely too heavy.

Thomas couldn’t number the days. There were few, here and there. Someone in America, when he went with the family. But none like this, never once like this. No resting after, for starts, wet and exhausted, and not filthy at all.

“Yes,” Thomas says. “You?”

Talbot doesn’t answer right away. Thomas can’t see his face, but he feels Talbot’s breath catch for a moment, and for the first time he thinks he has pushed Talbot to a place Talbot doesn’t want to go. Thomas feels Talbot turn his head away. He fully expects him to stay silent, change the topic, or distract Thomas in a way Thomas would not be able to help but enjoy ---

But Talbot answers. “Remember Charlie Rogers?”

For an instant, Thomas stops breathing. He is sure Talbot notices, with how close they are now, with their bodies’ heat still melting into each other.

“I’m a sad, sad boy, Barrow,” Talbot says, a laconic smile in his voice, and Thomas is glad Talbot can’t see his face, the shock that is undoubtedly written there. “Would you believe it?”

“I’m sorry,” Thomas says hoarsely. “I didn’t know.”

“I don’t tend to let people know.” Talbot lets his hand rest on Thomas’ chest, runs the tips of his fingers through the dark hair. “It takes maintenance to be as happy as I am.” 

Talbot turns his head to kiss Thomas’ neck, just behind his right ear. “I had a good mind to give up on the whole thing altogether after Charlie,” he says into Thomas’ neck. “The clubs, the races. The dances.” His breath is almost cool against Thomas’ overheated skin. “Mary would have made it easy. It would have made  _ Mary _ easy, at that.”

Thomas shifts his body around until he lies chest to chest with Talbot again, eye to eye. “Why didn’t you?” he asks.

Talbot smiles his catlike smile and trails his fingertips down Thomas’ back until he shivers. “Why, you want a compliment?”

“No,” Thomas says, and kisses that smile quickly before it disappears. Talbot abandons Thomas’ back and pulls him into the kiss with both hands, closer. “I want the truth,” says Thomas when they break apart.

“Oh, the truth,” Talbot says, as if that was the most mundane thing in the world. He searches Thomas’ face, for what, Thomas doesn’t quite know. Maybe the hint of irony that would allow Talbot to slip through the cracks once again. But Thomas has made sure to ask earnestly.

So Talbot thinks for a moment and then smiles as if the thought - the truth of it - surprised him, too.

“I’d have gotten so awfully bored,” he says, and it takes a moment for Thomas to understand that this is not a joke, that this  _ is _ Talbot’s truth. And it seems to dawn on Talbot in that same instant what those words mean between them, with what they just shared, and with the wildly different stakes this moment has in their lives, and with the scars on Thomas’ wrists still a stark white.

“I’m sorry,” Talbot says. “I…”

“If I’d had your life,” Thomas says, “I’d have lived it fully, too.” And he so wants to believe it, he even dares to dream it for a second. It doesn’t take much, with Talbot’s warmth under him, his heartbeat against his ribcage, to stretch this blink of an eye into a short, human eternity.

“Would you laugh at me if I told you I’m terrified?” Talbot says.

“I would never laugh at you,” Thomas says.

“Not of --- losing, I suppose,” Talbot specifies. “But of missing out. Of dying on the track, in a war, from a sickness, and not having lived it fully, that short, precious life I’ve been given.”

Thomas shakes his head, incredulous. When it comes to life, it has always been the long, cold, lonely stretch that has scared him. Never, not once, has he thought of his own life as short, always too keenly aware that others would briefly come into it and pass away, leaving him only to himself again.

“What are you smiling about?” Talbot asks.

“Nothing,” Thomas says. “Only, I don’t think we’re the same after all.” He says it without malice.

“I suppose you’re right,” Talbot says. 

There is silence for a moment, short and sweet like the distance between them.

“Let’s pretend, then,” Thomas says eventually. “Just for a while longer.”

And Talbot obeys.


	7. Seven

On their drive home the October air is so crisp and clear Thomas can taste it in the back of his throat. When the Small House comes into view at the end of the alleyway, he expects a familiar sensation of dread with it, but if it’s there at all it passes quickly. Lady Mary and George come out to greet them, and everything falls back into its old, accustomed balance. It’s almost easy.

He helps Talbot push the car into the garage and pull the tarpaulin over it.

“We’ll fix her for winter next week,” Talbot says, and Thomas says nothing.

Talbot retires to the house and Thomas serves him and his family their dinner, answering dutifully to Lady Mary’s chit-chat questions while Talbot stays determinedly silent, eyes down, and when Thomas walks back along the gravel path to his room above the garage he takes another deep breath of autumn air, the dying leaves, the warmth still sitting between the wooden beams of the barn, the whiff of smoke from the first furnaces lit.

Upstairs, he takes his suitcase from underneath his bed and starts packing.

Thomas has packed more suitcases in his life than he’d care to count, so it doesn’t take him very long at all. Cotton shirts don’t fold so differently from silk ones when it comes down to it. His livery he puts on a hanger and leaves it on the door of his closet. He finishes up and the suitcase closes easily. Whenever he did travel, Thomas has travelled light. With the suitcase packed and closed and lined up proper to the wall, Thomas sits down on the edge of the made bed and waits.

It’s hardly past nine when he hears steps on the stairs. There’s a knock on the door, and when Thomas answers, Talbot shrugs into the room, a couple of stray raindrops on his shirt sleeves. He has left his dinner jacket in the house, Thomas notices, as if that made any difference - Talbot still looks out of place under the sloped, low ceiling, oddly tall, larger than life. For a moment Thomas thinks Talbot will cross straight over to him, embrace him on the bed and put deeds to whatever he has been cooking up in his mind, but then Talbot just stops short at the door, his hand still on the doorknob.

His eyes catch on the suitcase in the corner, the livery on the closet front, and then on Thomas, sitting on the edge of his bed, his hands folded in his lap.

“I wouldn’t have asked you to leave,” Talbot says, sounding almost surprised.

“I know,” Thomas responds. He doesn’t say more, and judging by the way Talbot looks at him, a sudden sadness in his eyes, he doesn’t have to. Talbot understands. He _ has _ to understand. This is not new, this is nothing but the postponed result of a decision made one long day and night ago.

For a moment Talbot seems unsure about how to proceed, and when Thomas doesn’t move or does anything to invite him in, Talbot sits down next to him uninvited, the mattress denting under his weight, their knees touching. It reminds Thomas of that night on the road, driving, Talbot’s hand on his on the gear stick.

Talbot puts his hand on Thomas’ knee, and Thomas fully intends to shove it aside, but when his hand comes down on the back of Talbot’s there’s little else he can do but intertwine their fingers, holding on to the last bit of warmth. From the moment he set foot into the house almost a year ago, he knew it wasn’t going to let him down gently.

“I dreamed of you and me in this bed, you know,” Talbot says to their tangled hands. “In this bed, and in mine, and in every bed in the house, in every bed in the _ country _,” he says. Thomas would be lying if he said the same thoughts hadn’t crossed his mind, so he says nothing. The stark difference between them, in the end, is that to Talbot dreams are doorways, and to Thomas they are traps.

“You’re free to go, of course,” Talbot adds. “_ Of course _. And I’m not here to stop you.”

But he doesn’t remove his hand from Thomas’ knee, nor does Thomas untangle their fingers. Thomas listens to Talbot’s breathing and matches his own to it. He’s nothing if not calm, but it’s soothing nonetheless, an anchor.

“I want you to be happy, Thomas,” Talbot says, and Thomas knows Talbot’s looking at him now, so he doesn’t dare turn his head. “I want you try it at least, I know it’s frightening, but I _ need _you to try.”

Thomas says nothing and looks down at his knees, their fingers woven together. It doesn’t look as if they were easy to part.

“I can’t be, here,” Thomas says, and Talbot nods.

“No, you’re right. I suppose not.” He says it flat, like he’s only just beginning to grasp the bleak reality of it. He swallows hard. “But I wish that for you. That companionship. God knows I love you, but it’s entirely something else to share someone’s life, not just someone’s bed.”

Thomas looks up at Talbot, his heart feeling like he just dialled up a gear, and accelerated, not shaking him apart with it, but entering a new, exhilarating way of being.

“What?” Talbot asks, his voice hoarse. “Are you going to laugh at me?”

Thomas shakes his head.

“I didn’t offend you, did I?” Talbot asks.

“No,” Thomas says.

“Then what’s that look?” Talbot raises his free hand to Thomas’ face, his expression so puzzled he’s almost smiling now. He runs his fingers over Thomas’ forehead as if trying to smooth out the creases.

“You said you loved me,” Thomas says when he finally finds the voice for it. He still feels raw for needing it so much, admitting to it.

“This would be a lot easier if I didn’t,” Talbot says, with a smile, but there must be something about Thomas’ expression that catches with him, because he turns serious the next moment. “But I do,” he repeats with emphasis. “And you are not allowed to doubt it.”

A short, dry laugh escapes Thomas.

“I’d make good on it, too,” Talbot says, “I’d _ make _you believe it, if it wasn’t for ---”

Thomas kisses him before he can finish the sentence, cupping Talbot’s face with both hands, claiming ownership of the moment before Talbot can ruin it with a mention of Lady Mary. A surprised sigh escapes Talbot before he softens for it.

“You’re not making this easy,” Talbot says when they break apart.

“I can’t, can I?” Thomas says.

“That wouldn’t be fair, I suppose,” Talbot admits.

It’s then that Thomas realizes that in a matter of hours, he will get up and walk away from this rare, strange man who loves him, his lips, his touch, his smile. And there’s a pain with that Thomas didn’t anticipate when he calmly thought it through in the car with Talbot next to him, heading north. When he next takes a breath it’s almost a sob.

Talbot wraps him in his arms and holds him, soothes him like a baby, while Thomas’ hands hold on to every bit of Talbot they can find, the back of his shirt, fistfulls of fabric, his elbows, the sharp edges of his hip bones. There’s relief in being held, and, Thomas realizes, in being_ known _. He only fully understands the weight he has shed in the past few hours now that he is about to don it again to walk the world, trying not to risk his life by merely existing.

“You’ll be fine,” Talbot says, wiping the tears from Thomas’ face with his open palm, his own face wet, smiling. “You’ll be more than fine, you’ll be wonderful.”

Thomas takes a shaky breath and does his best to try and believe him.

“You’ll have something I never had,” Talbot says, “and don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. But there’s one thing my birth never afforded me, and that’s the chance at an invisible life. Not inconsequential, that’s not what I’m saying, because you are not made to be an inconsequential man, Thomas Barrow. But knowing what you know and doing what you do and being who you are --- life will grant you the privilege of living quiet and unobserved and_ happily _, I am certain of that. One day you’ll find a good man who loves you to share that with.”

Maybe it’s the way Talbot says it without a hint of irony, maybe it’s that Talbot’s hand is still on his cheek, and only minutes ago Thomas has seen and heard for himself that someone loving him by something more than relation, by _ choice _, is possible in this universe --- whatever it is, for the first time Thomas can see the path ahead clearly, sees it bright and full of possibility. The curiosity it sparks in his chest chokes him up, it’s too new, too good. 

“And you?” Thomas asks.

“I’ll be wretched,” Talbot says, and smiles. “For a while. I’ll recover.”

He runs his hand over Thomas’ cheek, as if he wanted to add a tactile aspect to the memory actively forming in his brain, keep more than just Thomas’ image, keep his touch, too.

“Who knows, perhaps I’ll have this be _ my _ education,” Talbot says. “My debut, my first season.”

Thomas smiles at the echo of Talbot’s own words to him, but he’s not quite sure what Talbot means. “How?”

Talbot’s face changes in a way Thomas has learned to recognize. The mask slips away, the truth edges out.

“I’m not a brave man, Thomas, you know that,” Talbot starts, and Thomas is about to contradict him when Talbot shakes his head.

“I only _ appear _ brave because I go fast. It keeps people from getting a good look at all the things wrong with me.” Talbot tries a smile that turns out bitter. “All that time speeding, I thought I was chasing something, but really I was running. Perhaps it’s time I settled. Not because I hate that part of me, the part that loves you ---”

Thomas feels it in his chest, brief and bright ---

“ --- but because I have all the love I could ever ask for _ here _, at home. Most people like us, they’d risk death for a life like the one I have with Mary, and here I am throwing it away.” He takes a moment to think, sinks deeper into the truth of it. “I thought it was weak and cowardly to love a woman like that when I was equally capable of loving a man, but I do love her so very much. How could I let that go to waste?” He swallows. “I wanted to live my life honestly and ended up deceiving everybody in it, isn’t that just the oddest irony?” 

“No,” Thomas says. “There’s nothing odd about it.”

He knows exactly what Talbot is saying. The mandatory lie they tell to live at all, the denial so deeply ingrained it feels like truth, the desire sharp and pointed like a knife, drawing blood from their hardened skin every single time.

“It’s time I came home,” Talbot says. “And it’s time you faced the world.”

“Yes,” Thomas says, well aware that his leap is higher than Talbot’s will ever be. Talbot is choosing a safe haven while Thomas is pushing out to sea, but tonight the distant shores Talbot has given him a glimpse of make him giddy with excitement.

“Yes,” Thomas repeats, nodding, laughing, light-headed with it. “I’ll live, I promise.”

And Talbot embraces him, kisses him sloppily on the cheek and gives him a beaming smile.

\---

In the morning, Thomas finds the cat sitting on a fat letter on his doorstep. He shoos the cat away, but it gravitates right back to him, rubbing its orange fur on his trouser leg. Thomas picks up the envelope. It feels too heavy for paper only.

In it he finds several pages of narrow handwriting, except the note up front that’s written wide and curled and confident. Thomas lifts the paper to his nose and smells Talbot, his cologne, his cigarettes.

_ Thomas _, it reads.

_ I’m sure you’ve had plenty of thought about the road ahead, and I hope to God it excites you. You are leaving this house not as a man in service. The attached references will help you find employment as a mechanic with any shop looking for help. But we both know it’s not employment you are looking for, or at least not first and foremost. Find attached the key that will take care of the rest. _

_ Go fast, my love, and never falter. You are a man worth knowing _ _ and _ _ worth loving. _

_Always, Henry _

Thomas’ hand shakes when files through the fistfull of paper attached, and a key falls out with a metallic clatter. Crouching down, Thomas picks it up from the wooden landing, the cat pushing in to rub its head on his hands.

The key would be nondescript, if not for the engraving on it.

“That can’t be,” Thomas murmurs. It feels familiar in his palm. Talbot has passed it to him a thousand times --- to test the engine, to pass it on to the usher at the race track and once, on a memorable drunk night, summer-warm, to drive himself.

Thomas flicks through the pages again, for what he doesn’t know. Encouragement? Proof? And of what? There’s nothing. Just the smiling, lopsided writing on the front page, and the narrowly pressed words of praise following them.

_ Find attached the key that will take care of the rest… _

His fingers numb, Thomas pushes key and envelope in his pocket to carry his suitcase downstairs. And sure enough: in the garage he finds the black lightning uncovered, the tarpaulin folded neatly on the passenger’s seat, a pair of goggles and gloves on the driver’s side. The black varnish is cool to the touch. Thomas still trembling fingertips leave tiny halos of white on it.

For a moment just Thomas stands there, unsure what to do. His fingers reach for the letter in his pocket, eager to check again, to verify, but they meet the cool metal of the key first. And then there is no decision left to make.

Thomas hauls his suitcase into the passenger’s seat. He opens the barn doors wide, dewy cool morning air washing into the dusty warmth of the barn. The world outside is still painted blue, the sun only just coming up.

Thomas starts the car routinely, the engine humming alive. And with it, Thomas’ heartbeat picks up. He reverses the car out of the barn onto the gravel in front of the house. The sound of it rips through the stillness of the morning, a flutter of disturbed birds from the chestnut tree, rising up into the pale autumn sky. It may have woken someone in the house, he thinks. Thomas smiles. He is not leaving a ghost. His presence is causing ripples in the world, as he is sure his absence will, too.

Switching into first gear, the idling engine humming, Thomas looks up to the front of the Small House, the curtains drawn, the windows pale and blind with the reflection of the early morning sky. He briefly regrets not taking his leave of Lady Mary, or at least Master George. For a second he thinks he sees movement in one of the windows: a small head stretching up to see over the windowsill. But then the curtains remain unmoved, so perhaps he was mistaken. He will write a letter, Thomas resolves, to explain his absence to Master George, and maybe one day, who knows, he will receive one in return.

Thomas turns away from the looming front of the Talbot house, pushing the car into first gear. He steers out of the open gate and onto the tree-lined driveway leading up to the main road, and when he turns from the gravel unto smooth asphalt, he finally accelerates.

As Thomas puts on speed, he feels the road rushing away under him, the rising sun stretching tentative fingers over the horizon, bathing everything bright and golden, the vibration of the engine in his bones, his heart thumping, alive. He knows the Small House is shrinking in his wake, into a speck of dust, a nothing to be blown away and forgotten, and Talbot and Lady Mary with it. He takes a deep breath of the cool, clear autumn air and it washes everything away, the tension, the regret, his past. There is a lump in his throat, but his heart --- it doesn’t feel broken, Thomas realizes with a start. On the contrary, it feels whole and stronger than ever. Not a traitor in his chest anymore but a miraculous machine, keeping him alive and driving him onwards.

He doesn't know where he is going, north towards the Scottish border, the wide and wild stretch of the Highlands, or south towards the Channel, towards a whole new world beyond in Europe. He thinks of Paris, or possibly Berlin, buzzing capitals filled with people. Amongst the millions it would be a miracle if there was nobody like him. 

He doesn't have to decide now. The road takes him ahead first, away, and that is all that matters.

Thomas smiles, the wind hard on his face, and races, and breathes, and feels --- free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks all, if you read this far I'm assuming you enjoyed it! Pleasure's all mine, and who knows what fresh horrors the upcoming movie will unearth in my brain, so you might yet see me around... :)


End file.
